About Me

undergrad RN
I'm a twenty-something Canadian student. After stumbling through a few years of college, I finally managed to get into the nursing school of my dreams, where I hope to graduate in 2012 with a nursing baccalaureate degree. I want to offer an honest look into how a modern nurse is educated, both good and bad. Eventually I hope to compare my education to my day-to-day career and see how it holds up. Whatever happens, it should be somewhat entertaining. Find me on allnurses.com!
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Friday, September 12, 2008

First full week

My first full week is complete and I am feeling completely brainless. Mostly the issue is that I'm already behind because technically I should have done my first readings for Anatomy and Physiology sometime last week, even if I didn't know what they were. Anatomy's readings for next class took me all week to do, because there is SO much to the chapters. When the material is really dry and complicated, I have to highlight as I read, to try and grasp the major points and prevent my eyes from glazing over. I haven't even started reading Physiology yet.

So far, nursing school is way more intense than my years in police or design studies. Part of that is because I'm actively trying to learn the material instead of spacing out during class and then cramming later. But honestly, the only class I can compare the pace of A&P to is a design history course I took, which, at least, was spread out over 2 semesters. A&P is 6 hours a week, crammed in to one semester. I really wonder why that is, given that I will be in school for another 4 years...? The pace is so fast that the profs aren't teaching the material, so much as they are just reading it out loud off of the projector slides.

I think the competitiveness of nursing school is directly related to the course difficulty. A minimum high school average of 80% (letter grade B/3.0 GPA) was required for entry this year. 1275 students applied, and 186 were accepted into the program.

Compare this to my last two programs, where the minimum average was essentially a high school diploma or GED. The profs did not take for granted that we understood anything, really, so they went through and explained everything the way you might remember in high school.

However, I think that since you have to have good study habits and have cognitive abilities in order to be accepted into nursing, the profs take advantage of this and hit the ground running with course material and pacing.

Now, I'm not complaining. If given a choice, I'd rather be in a class too fast for me instead of a class too slow. It keeps me engaged and an active participant, and keeps me motivated to keep up.

It's definitely different than I'm used to... I'm just sayin'. :)

One last thing to note: I've read a lot of student nurse blogs over the past year, some from start to finish (they are now nurses). One thing that jumps out at me is the content starts out strong and frequent at the start of their blogging but tapers off to maybe once or twice a month (or less) later on. I know from having kept journals before, it can be hard to find the energy to write something, anything, but before you know it the chance to write at all is gone, and you're left at the end of some big event without much to show for it. I don't want that to happen to my blog.

Therefore, I am committing that even when the week has been crazy, crazy, busy and all I want to do is hide somewhere, I will blog at least once a week.

There. I said it. Now you can hold me to it.

1 comments:

SummerAnytime said...

I'm with you. I started my blog to chronicle nursing school, but I've changed my mind to let it include anything that's on my mind.Otherwise I might be feeling real nursing school burnout and not want to write at all. I am committed to blog at least a couple times a week and hope to include lots of fun nursing stories. Becky (2nd quarter nursing student)

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Thanks for your thoughts :)