Once you get past the first week or so of nursing school, people start to show their true colors. For the first week, all you notice is that you're surrounded by kindred spirits who have jumped through all the same hoops that you've jumped through.
Oh my God, your physiology professor taught you the renal system that way too? Oh my God, you had trouble on that part of the TEAS too? Same!
After your short honeymoon period with your peers, however, you come to realize that contrary to popular belief, your fellow nursing students are human too. And some of your fellow humans, you will be absolutely unable to stand.
Today in my lecture hall course, while we were doing our first set of case studies and reviewing apothecary unit conversions, the two girls behind me were incessantly insulting students who asked questions they considered unnecessary.
Oh my God, that's totally on page eight-hundred-so-and-so, they obviously can't read. And oh my God, that's so obvious! What a stupid question!
My approach to this program is simple - no honest, relevant question can or should be called "stupid". When a real nurse in a real hospital setting isn't sure of something, I honest-to-goodness hope that she doesn't just keep quiet. I hope she asks and asks and asks until her supervisors ears bleed and she is fully aware of what she is doing.
We're in nursing school to best learn how to help people in improving their health situations, and when you have a know-it-all attitude and shame people for having a knowledge deficit when they're in an environment where they're actively trying to learn how to improve, I never want you as my nurse. Ever.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Week 01
It may not be much to boast about yet, but I can now officially say that I've made it through my first week of nursing school, and I don't think I've gone through such a broad spectrum of emotions in such a short period of time.
I started the week already a bit exhausted and apprehensive, because of the considerable amount of reading and preparing we he had to do before even being taught anything, but for the most part, I was ecstatic to finally be where I'd been working to be for four years now.
My poor, naive little heart started to run circles around itself once we finally got down to things - at first, it was just hesitation to get into the first-semester world of catheter-inserting and bathing. While I was always aware that these were things I would have to do, suffice it to say that I never considered them among the reasons I wanted to get into nursing. Devising care plans, definitely. Talking to patients and assuaging their concerns, absolutely. Working with and giving encouragement to families - for me, that's the stuff dreams are made of. Now, finally realizing what I would have to do to get there, I felt like my stomach was being turned inside out and pulled out through my esophagus. Is that even anatomically possible?
I started the week already a bit exhausted and apprehensive, because of the considerable amount of reading and preparing we he had to do before even being taught anything, but for the most part, I was ecstatic to finally be where I'd been working to be for four years now.
My poor, naive little heart started to run circles around itself once we finally got down to things - at first, it was just hesitation to get into the first-semester world of catheter-inserting and bathing. While I was always aware that these were things I would have to do, suffice it to say that I never considered them among the reasons I wanted to get into nursing. Devising care plans, definitely. Talking to patients and assuaging their concerns, absolutely. Working with and giving encouragement to families - for me, that's the stuff dreams are made of. Now, finally realizing what I would have to do to get there, I felt like my stomach was being turned inside out and pulled out through my esophagus. Is that even anatomically possible?
Thursday, January 26, 2012
What you wear from ear to ear, and not from head to toe...
I have to admit, one of the landmark moments for me so far has been finally having my own scrubs to wear. Never mind that the custom set my school requires is about $90 for a top and bottom set, and fits like it's made for a chubby middle school boy, despite putting my own measurements into their size calculator.
Scrubs are probably not a big deal at all, in perspective. They're not flattering, and the custom Dove Uniform scrubs we have to buy are uncomfortable and overpriced. People who have already had clinical experience probably don't even care about their scrubs anymore. But for me, when I had never had a pair of my own, it was a huge moment. It was a symbol, a rite of passage. I have said before that I felt like a newborn again in my college life – and if that's the case, this felt like taking my first step. A first step is nothing years after the fact – but at the moment that it's happening, it's a momentous occasion that you think that you'll never forget.
Scrubs are probably not a big deal at all, in perspective. They're not flattering, and the custom Dove Uniform scrubs we have to buy are uncomfortable and overpriced. People who have already had clinical experience probably don't even care about their scrubs anymore. But for me, when I had never had a pair of my own, it was a huge moment. It was a symbol, a rite of passage. I have said before that I felt like a newborn again in my college life – and if that's the case, this felt like taking my first step. A first step is nothing years after the fact – but at the moment that it's happening, it's a momentous occasion that you think that you'll never forget.
How Did I Get Here?
As far as academics, the past few years have been a blur. Or more appropriately, a series of blows to the head (literally, in one case) that have left me in a state of complete disorientation. Academically speaking, now that I am starting nursing school, I feel like I am starting college all over again.
I graduated from high school in 2007 and immediately enrolled in community college, where I was able to get a spot in exactly zero of the courses I actually needed in order to get into nursing school. The second semester, I was lucky enough to get into two. Four years, an associates degree, a marriage, a spouse's Army deployment, a university transfer, a job, and a promotion later, I was ready to take my TEAS exam and apply to nursing school.
I spent about an hour or two a day for two weeks studying and managed a 92 on the exam, which made me feel pretty good until I saw that the average GPA admitted into the programs I was applying to was sitting comfortably at a 3.75 in many cases. I looked down at my meager 3.67 in shame. Already, I felt like I was a bottom of the barrel candidate. I would flounder around, I was sure, and never get in. Though to be fair, a 3.67 is not the bottom of the barrel, but it was dangerously close to not being the top of the barrel, which, for nursing applicants, is a terrifying place to be stuck.
In the months that followed, my husband got out of the Army and picked out a college he was absolutely set on attending, a good two hours from where we lived, without traffic. This shaved down my number of options for nursing schools to... one. So, not even knowing whether or not I was even accepted, sitting precariously on the waiting list, we packed our things and moved to Sacramento in December.
Lo and behold, the day after we had packed up our U-Haul and drove the bulk of our things to Sacramento, I received an email from Admissions with one word that told me all I needed to know:
Congratulations.
Unbeknownst to me, the underlying message in this was, “Congratulations, you now have an avalanche of paperwork to finish, and if you don't, you're out of luck.”
And so, four online tutorials about patient safety, a few hundred dollars, three immunizations and titers, two TB tests, and one bad computer meltdown later, I was finally save from eviction, so to speak, from nursing school. So began this wild ride that you will accompany me on. Are you buckled in? Are you ready?
I hope I am.
I graduated from high school in 2007 and immediately enrolled in community college, where I was able to get a spot in exactly zero of the courses I actually needed in order to get into nursing school. The second semester, I was lucky enough to get into two. Four years, an associates degree, a marriage, a spouse's Army deployment, a university transfer, a job, and a promotion later, I was ready to take my TEAS exam and apply to nursing school.
I spent about an hour or two a day for two weeks studying and managed a 92 on the exam, which made me feel pretty good until I saw that the average GPA admitted into the programs I was applying to was sitting comfortably at a 3.75 in many cases. I looked down at my meager 3.67 in shame. Already, I felt like I was a bottom of the barrel candidate. I would flounder around, I was sure, and never get in. Though to be fair, a 3.67 is not the bottom of the barrel, but it was dangerously close to not being the top of the barrel, which, for nursing applicants, is a terrifying place to be stuck.
In the months that followed, my husband got out of the Army and picked out a college he was absolutely set on attending, a good two hours from where we lived, without traffic. This shaved down my number of options for nursing schools to... one. So, not even knowing whether or not I was even accepted, sitting precariously on the waiting list, we packed our things and moved to Sacramento in December.
Lo and behold, the day after we had packed up our U-Haul and drove the bulk of our things to Sacramento, I received an email from Admissions with one word that told me all I needed to know:
Congratulations.
Unbeknownst to me, the underlying message in this was, “Congratulations, you now have an avalanche of paperwork to finish, and if you don't, you're out of luck.”
And so, four online tutorials about patient safety, a few hundred dollars, three immunizations and titers, two TB tests, and one bad computer meltdown later, I was finally save from eviction, so to speak, from nursing school. So began this wild ride that you will accompany me on. Are you buckled in? Are you ready?
I hope I am.
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