Gosh, I don’t even know where to start. I never intended to not write at least weekly, but an accelerated program is, well, accelerated! Who the heck has time? I want to make time. :)
Well, let’s see…I had a 2nd not mandatory orientation on Monday and Tuesday before class started, so I really didn’t work those last two days. Just a couple of hours. It was a really great way to transition my work life to school life. My office threw me a great going away party. I’ve been told by everyone that the office is not the same without my loud-ass laugh. I’m glad I was someone to miss; that’s what I always want to strive to be. Miss me instead of ‘good-riddance,’ ya know?
So... school! It is GREAT. I’ve already had plenty of “the thrill of victory; the agony of defeat.” Aug Interim was 3.5 weeks of 8-5, Monday through Friday. I worked really hard, did several Returns aka Check-Offs. On female/male cath or sterile wound dressing, I drew sterile wound dressing. And I left that return barely holding it together. I broke technique twice without reporting it (without NOTICING it) and though my teacher was very nice and I took it gratefully, by the time I got down to my locker and a sympathetic friend saw the look on my face, I started bawling. I don’t want to potentially hurt someone by breaking sterile technique! I don’t want an 85 either! And I don’t know why I didn’t get a worse grade than that. Sigh. That was a very hard afternoon. I actually asked the teacher before she gave me my grade when I could retest because I am very hard on myself. Glad it wasn’t necessary; she said I had the principles, I just needed more practice. So. I hate even reliving that day here in words.
The weekend before our finals/final grades, we all went to happy hour at a great local bar. Well, not all of us, but like, 12 of us. What a blast. We all got quite drunk. J Good times. Steph reported to us Monday that she was parading around her house naked afterwards, looking to see if her grade had posted from the test we took earlier that day. LOL
My dear Indian friend who comforted me that day didn’t make the cut at the end of Aug Interim. It was too sad. She didn’t make the grades. All of our tests are in NCLEX format to teach us to test that way AND she has the language barrier. She’s incredibly brilliant – she was going Pharm until she tried out for this program. But her grades weren’t good enough and she was eliminated. We were all so dismayed.
I ended up with a 93 in the Fundamentals class that I screwed up the sterile wound dressing. And I didn’t do good enough on my final for Essentials. I couldn’t believe it when the final grade posted; an 89.3. Are you kidding? 89.3!!??? The College of Health Professions has a college wide agreement that there is no rounding. So I got a big fat B in my Essentials course. I didn’t study nearly enough on the different theorists and stages of development: Freud, Erkison, Piaget. (This whole going back to college thing is TOTAL Identity vs. Role Confusion, LOL) And it totally burned me. My fault—I have to work harder next time.
Here’s the kicker. We have a guy in class, Mike, that is a big work-avoider, laid back, dry humor—really a lot of what I was used to in my IT Office that I used to work in. So his humor is great, but his laziness isn’t. First day of class, he was dubbed “Astronaut” and the freaking Astronaut got all A’s. And I got an 89.3. That pissed me the FARTHEST off. I did worse than the freaking Astronaut. *Sigh J
Other things…
God, I LOVE the GEICO commercial “did the little piggy cry wee-wee-wee all the way home!” I am so Maxwell, the piggy. :D Weeeeee! Weee-weee-weeee!!!!!
What else. OK, so Fall I started. I have Med-Surg, Health Assessment online, Health Assessment Lab, Childbearing Family (ob), and my FIRST CLINICAL ROTATION! Weeeeee!
OH, our Childbearing teacher. Man. She is…something. She can be so funny, and then so damned strict and sharp tongued, you just never know where you are with her. So we all had to RE-check off on doing IVs with her before we went to clinicals. And we’re all like, “we just checked off on this with our other two teachers in Fundys.” But in Fundys, they allowed us to use the fake IV arms. They bleed and everything, but according to Ms. Childbearing, it ISN’T the same.
So what was told to us to be a voluntary stick-clinic, was quickly changed to an INVOLUNTARY stick clinic once we got in Ms. Childbearing’s class. It created a bit of an uproar, honestly. And after belly-aching on the part of many in our class, we did get the option to do our (re)check-off on either the fake arm again or the living. Our classmates. A choice…sort of. No one wanted to admit that they were one of the ones who bitched to the program coordinator, so everyone chose to stick a classmate. J Ms. Childbearing said, “There is nothing like doing the real thing.” And as much as I on-again-off-again don’t like her, she was absolutely right. I planned from the beginning to stick a real person, because I need the experience, but I was really, really glad that I did.
My bestie in Nsg school is a LPN. For some, this might add some performance anxiety, but she is a great teacher and encourager, so she really is great for a partner. As it turns out, she is also an exceptional bleeder. I had her blood all over everything and the floor when I stuck her. I got the cathalon kinked, so I didn’t get to do the whole thing. It was fine for the check off, but not enough for ME. So I hung around and there was another girl who wanted to do a 2nd stick at the end. I was so glad, because I felt like I had to redeem myself. So we restuck each other. Two bruised hands later, we felt great.
My first exams, ‘A’s in everything except Childbearing. 89 in that one. Goatee Man had a hypoglycemic episode the night before (diabetic) and I lost 2 hours of study time the night before. Thank goodness that was the first test; still have time to make that B an A, hopefully.
My first rotation is OR/One Day Surgery/OB at Hospital-of-Changing-Church-Affiliations. We do one day in OR, 4 in OB, and one in One Day Surgery. So I observed my first week, in the OR. Pretty cool. I saw a C Section and a total hysterectomy on a girl younger than myself. Enjoyed it, but OR is not for me. I don’t want to look at the same 5 people all day long.
OB was this past week. FAB. I, after panicking internally the first hour, fell right into my role. The more you act like who you are, the more you are treated like who you are. Same applies in nursing. See my next post for a glimpse into what happened.
I’ve spent around 18 hours this weekend studying for various tests coming up this next week. I really want those ‘A’s. And I really want an invite to Sigma Theta Tau.
Guess that’s it for now. I’ll catch you up as I remember stuff. I am so honored to be among the chosen, everyday. Of course this is hard work, but I love it. I'm going to be a RN!
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