On Thursday I stayed after class in skills lab with about a dozen other students to practice some medication skills for a big practical exam that's coming up on the Tuesday after spring break. One of the lab instructors, a very smart RN who I don't work with very often was there helping out. She spent a half hour or so drilling us on dosages, injection sites, side effects, etc., and it seemed like every question she asked, I had the correct answer to. After her questions, I poked around the med carts on my own for a little while, then packed up and got ready to leave. As I was walking out, I had the following exchange with her:
Sometimes you have a professor who loves being a hardass. She locks the door right on the dot at the start of class, so if you're late, no class for you. She loves to brag about how at least 5 students fail her class every semester and have to take it over again, and the rest barely pass. She presents PowerPoint lectures in class, but doesn't post them online for you to print out and bring to class to save your wrists the torture of scribbling 90 minutes of illegible notes. She flips through the PowerPoint screens so fast that half the time you can't get the information off of them, but too bad for you, because she's not going backward. She has former students come in on the first day and tell you how hard her tests are while she smirks in the background.
I've made it through the first 3 weeks of the nursing curriculum! Whee! Pretty good, seems how I thought I was going to die after the first syllabus day.
- The first semester is the hardest. They cram as much information as they possibly can into your brain, but you don't yet get to apply it in clinicals with real people.
- Think about a nurse that you've encountered who was lazy, mean, or dumb. Remember that they went through nursing school too, and if they could make it through, you definitely can!
- Nursing is always interesting and ever changing. Even through she has been a nurse for more than 30 years, she said that she didn't feel like she had been in the same profession the whole time and isn't desperate for retirement to come.
Well, I got through my 290 pages or so from last weekend, and I'll be hitting the books hard again this weekend. I'm still trying to find some time in my weekdays to study, read, and hopefully log some extra time in skills lab at the school. I am still working at my job, and although I have cut way back to 15 hours a week, I find myself envying the students who can go home and take a nap after class. My schedule this semester has me up at 6 a.m., in class or lab until about 1 p.m., going home to walk my dog, and going to work until 7:30 p.m. most days of the week. Monday I'm at school from 8 in the morning until 8 at night. Friday I play catch-up with my skills lab videos and time in the research library. This all makes for a very long week.
For textbook readings assigned on Friday, due Monday: 120 pages down. 170 more to go.
On January 5th my new school semester begins. I found out over the holiday break that I was admitted to the official nursing program. I was in the pre-nursing curriculum after I transferred into the school this fall, meaning that I had to finish up the school’s pre-requisites for sciences, nursing intro courses, etc. From my understanding, about 80 people applied to get into 45 spots for the nursing program this semester, and I was one of the selected. Whee! I had a big smile on my face the whole week that I found out.
My schedule will be Monday through Friday, and I’ll be taking these courses:
*Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (Lecture and Lab)
*Foundations of Nursing and Critical Thinking
*Nursing Therapeutics (Lecture and Lab)
*Health Assessment Throughout the Lifespan (Lecture and Lab)
Now reality is setting in – holy crap, I got into the nursing program – and I am a bit nervous about starting this part of my journey. What if I have a hard time balancing work and school? What are my classes going to be like? What if I’m terrible at nursing or flunk out of my skills labs? I am sure all of my questions will work themselves out, but for now, I have a bit of a bellyache about it.
I’m trying to help myself by preparing as much as I can before the semester begins. I got my planner out and wrote all of my classes in it. I labeled and prepared my 3-ring binders and notebooks. I’m going to purchase my textbooks as soon as the bookstore opens after the holiday and start reading. I’ve also been trying to do things like prepare bigger meals than I normally would, and freeze part of them so I can have dinner ready in a flash at night, instead of coming home exhausted and eating a bag of chips for dinner. (Nothing makes me feel more exhausted than bad nutrition, I’m finding out.) I’m trying to pare down my life so that I can concentrate on the things that are important to me right now: K, school, my health, my house, my pets, and work. Finding balance between these things is going to be the most challenging issue as I progress through nursing school, I’m predicting.
{no dogs were harmed in the making of this post. he didn't really eat the sticker - it's safely stuck onto my fridge. :) }
