Okay, so here's what my life has been for the past week: had a big group project due on Sunday for the online class (that was a royal pain in the butt, not to mention a perfectly good waste of precious, precious time); on Monday I had a Health Assessment exam and a medical terminology test; and on Tuesday? uh-huh, that's right, Patho and I went for round number 3. And even though I came out of that test feeling as beaten up as I did the first two, I actually did okay. I scored a good 10 points better than I did on the first two, and that, to me, is very cool. The down side to this is that because I spent SO MUCH TIME and energy preparing for this exam, I am now exhausted and having quite a bit of a struggle focusing on the new material. Although I have barely won these first three battles, the war will be decided on July 7. On that day, Patho and I will face off on a comprehensive final exam.
My new strategies include the purchase of a digital voice recorder. So now, in addition to watching DVDs of Dr. G's lectures, I can listen to them while I'm washing the dishes and cooking and cleaning and playing with my dogs and shopping for groceries ... basically, I literally hear this man's voice in my head during my every waking moment. And I seriously look forward to the day he just shuts up.
Another new strategy: I dropped my ineffectual study group. I just didn't want to deal with all the negative attitudes there. And apparently it was a good move since I did so much better on this exam than the previous ones.
Last new strategy: The Smarty -pants girl on the front row who rakes in all the pens for answering questions in class is now one of my new study buddies. I figured I would benefit more from her friendship than from pummeling her with my 20-lb Patho book, so I asked if I could join their study group since I ditched my own. Turns out Smarty-pants girl is actually pretty cool. So now I have a good study group full of people who do not have bad attitudes and who are making passing grades ... ROCK ON!
The other thing about Smarty-pants girl: she has no practical skills whatsoever. She's totally new to taking vital signs and doing the actual stuff of nursing. I mentioned to her when we were practicing our vital signs that no matter how many hundreds of blood pressures I've checked, I still get a little nervous about hearing and reading it accurately, and she said, "That makes me feel so much better. I'm totally new to this and the blood pressure thing just baffles me." It's a biotrophic symbiotic parasitic relationship we now have.
The only non-school related thing that's happened is a Red Cross volunteer thing I did on Tuesday after my Patho exam. Some of the soldiers from our area who were in Iraq returned home Tuesday evening and the Red Cross was there to greet them and their families with cakes and cookies and chips and all that. It was a happy occasion. It was just the pick-me-up I needed after that wretched exam. One of the other volunteers is a retired nurse, although she looks and acts way too young to be retired. S is fabulous and I just love her. She's also single. So after most of the soldier folks had split, there was a group of guys still there just talking amongst themselves and I was all like, "S, you should meet one of those guys. Obviously they are not married or their wives would have been here to greet them."
S: "Well, it's just so hard to tell how old they are with their shaved heads."
Me: "Honey, they are legal, and that is all that matters."
S: "So which one do you have your eye on?"
Me: "Oh, pretty much all of them, but I'll share."
Keep the prayers and good thoughts, etc, coming - they totally got me through this last exam. At one point I was starting to panic and hyperventilate and basically have massive systemic breakdown, when I just closed my eyes, took a deep breath and reminded myself, "My momma is praying for me right now. All I can do is the best I can do." You know what they say, as long as there are exams, there will be prayer in schools.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Sunday, June 15, 2008
nursing school = life sucker
As I become more and more absorbed in the nursing program, my life becomes less and less interesting. Which means there's just not much to say here. I talked to my friend J last night and he was giving me the run down of what all he's been up to since we last talked - things like croquet and cook-outs and fun in the sun and light and happiness - and then he asked, "So what's been going on with you?" Um ... well ... I get up, go to school, come home, work on school stuff, and if I'm lucky I collapse in bed by midnight. Often, bed doesn't happen until 2 or 2:30. And then I'm up by 6 ... IN THE MORNING. I'm sure I'll say this many, many times throughout my nursing school experience: NURSING SCHOOL IS BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH. It's sucking the life right out of us all. The lack of sleep coupled with the incredible level of stress is enough to send anybody into the world beyond. Before it's all over with, I'll probably be begging to be put out of my misery.
This past week I had the privilege and honor of taking another Patho exam. All I can say is that my plan for world domination is coming along much better than my plan for being valedictorian of Pathophysiology. I passed the test, barely squeaking by again. But at least I'm not the girl who was sitting outside crying afterward. She did not pass the test. Nor did she pass the first one. If I didn't know that she had gone out with friends on the Friday night prior to our exam, I would have felt a bit more sorry for her. But still, I do feel a little sad - not just for her, but for me and everybody else who are working our butts off just to barely scrape by.
I am seriously thinking of dropping my study group and, therefore, forfeiting my 10 extra points. On the one hand, I REALLY NEED THOSE POINTS. On the other hand, if I weren't spending so much required time with my ineffectual group, maybe I could make more progress on learning this stuff. Last weekend I sat in with a different study group, and MAN! the difference was amazing. I honestly believe that my time with those folks is what kept me in the passing range. Of my assigned study group? I was the only one who passed. And our group leader? She has a really bad attitude. She's pissed because she's not passing. Sorry, sweetheart, but while Daddy can buy you a really nice condo, and really nice furniture to go in it, and a really nice SUV, Daddy can't buy you a passing grade in Dr. G's class. And if your daddy could do that? I would totally sleep with him and get him to buy me one too. (Mom, that was a joke. I would NEVER do that. You can start breathing again. I censor a lot of "brilliant" sarcasm from my blogs out of fear that I'm going to kill my mother, but sometimes I just gotta let loose ... sorry Mom.)
Health Assessment class is going well. I aced my first medical terminology quiz ... SCORE! I needed that win after getting beaten up in Patho. And, I also kicked butt on my first skills check-off, even though it involved doing a math formula problem on the fly. Totally NOT prepared for that! It took me an embarrassingly long time to work through that problem, all the while my professor and lab partner were looking on in eager anticipation. But I did it, even though my hands were shaking.
The on-line class is still the big pain in the butt that it's been from the start. Only now, the Wizard has turned up the heat a bit. I like to think of the instructor as the "Wizard" simply because nobody seems to know who she is. We've never seen her, and on her first internet introduction she said, "You shall refer to me as Teresa." I used the real name she gave here, because I'm not convinced it's actually her real name at all. I mean, who says that unless they are protecting their identity? I was very tempted to respond to her internet introduction with, "And you shall refer to me as Her Majesty"
Keep all the prayers coming, or rubbing the Buddha bellies, or burning the incense, or whatever ... because this little girl who wants to be a nurse when she grows up needs all the help she can get.
This past week I had the privilege and honor of taking another Patho exam. All I can say is that my plan for world domination is coming along much better than my plan for being valedictorian of Pathophysiology. I passed the test, barely squeaking by again. But at least I'm not the girl who was sitting outside crying afterward. She did not pass the test. Nor did she pass the first one. If I didn't know that she had gone out with friends on the Friday night prior to our exam, I would have felt a bit more sorry for her. But still, I do feel a little sad - not just for her, but for me and everybody else who are working our butts off just to barely scrape by.
I am seriously thinking of dropping my study group and, therefore, forfeiting my 10 extra points. On the one hand, I REALLY NEED THOSE POINTS. On the other hand, if I weren't spending so much required time with my ineffectual group, maybe I could make more progress on learning this stuff. Last weekend I sat in with a different study group, and MAN! the difference was amazing. I honestly believe that my time with those folks is what kept me in the passing range. Of my assigned study group? I was the only one who passed. And our group leader? She has a really bad attitude. She's pissed because she's not passing. Sorry, sweetheart, but while Daddy can buy you a really nice condo, and really nice furniture to go in it, and a really nice SUV, Daddy can't buy you a passing grade in Dr. G's class. And if your daddy could do that? I would totally sleep with him and get him to buy me one too. (Mom, that was a joke. I would NEVER do that. You can start breathing again. I censor a lot of "brilliant" sarcasm from my blogs out of fear that I'm going to kill my mother, but sometimes I just gotta let loose ... sorry Mom.)
Health Assessment class is going well. I aced my first medical terminology quiz ... SCORE! I needed that win after getting beaten up in Patho. And, I also kicked butt on my first skills check-off, even though it involved doing a math formula problem on the fly. Totally NOT prepared for that! It took me an embarrassingly long time to work through that problem, all the while my professor and lab partner were looking on in eager anticipation. But I did it, even though my hands were shaking.
The on-line class is still the big pain in the butt that it's been from the start. Only now, the Wizard has turned up the heat a bit. I like to think of the instructor as the "Wizard" simply because nobody seems to know who she is. We've never seen her, and on her first internet introduction she said, "You shall refer to me as Teresa." I used the real name she gave here, because I'm not convinced it's actually her real name at all. I mean, who says that unless they are protecting their identity? I was very tempted to respond to her internet introduction with, "And you shall refer to me as Her Majesty"
Keep all the prayers coming, or rubbing the Buddha bellies, or burning the incense, or whatever ... because this little girl who wants to be a nurse when she grows up needs all the help she can get.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
trials and tribulations
Yeah, yeah ... I know ... it's been almost two weeks since my last posting. I was feeling so defeated after my first Patho exam that I just couldn't bring myself to write about it. I mean, I passed it ... by a hair. I've seriously never worked so hard for such a low grade in my life. And now I'm facing another one. On Tuesday. Have I been studying? You betcha. That's pretty much ALL I've been doing. And that does not make for an interesting blog post, now does it? So I will try to fill in around the edges a bit.
I did do one fun thing recently. T and I had a girl's evening last Friday! That's right ... we went to see Sex And The City! The experience was fun, the movie was marginal. There was a group of women sitting behind us in the theater who started chatting it up with us - they were all like, "Girls!, we are going for cocktails after the movie ... you two should come with us! It'll be FUN!" I think what they meant to say was "We're going for MORE cocktails after the movie." Nothing brings women together faster than a movie about women! After the movie, T and I popped into a shoe store that's in the same shopping center as the theater. Actually, with the exception of our new best friends who were at the bar by then, I think most of the women from the theater were in the shoe store. Of course, T and I were not buying because we are poor nursing students, but there's almost as much joy in just trying on all the weirdo shoes that you would never wear even if you could afford to buy them. The next day I saw an article in the local newspaper about a group of ten nurses who rented a limo to take them to the movie and out for cocktails afterward - each of the nurses was dressed as her favorite SATC character ... and I bet they were wearing some of those fancy shoes that you just can't wear out to any ol' place. Like I said, SATC is an experience, not just a movie.
Okay, so my new strategy to conquer the upcoming Patho exam is to assign all my loved ones diseases. We are covering diseases of the blood and cardiovascular system, so I'm doling out leukemia and malignant lymphomas and atherosclerosis, just to name a few, to my nearest and dearest. Why am I giving my loved ones diseases rather than people I do not love so much? Because if someone I love tells me they have some scary disease, the first thing I'm going to do is research every possible resource for information. I will find out everything I can about it, and try to figure out how I can make it all better. However, if I hear of someone I do not love so much coming down with something nasty, I'm going to be all like, "Karma just bit you in the butt, didn't it." Hell hath no fury, and all that. So if any of my nearest and dearest are reading this, chances are I've given you a disease, but only because I love you more than chocolate. But not to worry! You will be miraculously cured next Tuesday ... only to fall victim to a respiratory affliction.
Oh yeah, we started an additional class this week. Health Assessment. I actually look forward to this class because we will learn how to DO THINGS. NURSING THINGS. And the very first day I got to use my nifty new stethoscope and sphygmomanometer (that's a big, shiny word that means blood pressure cuff) provided by those who now own me (the people who gave me that fabulous scholarship). I love how all of my equipment has their logo on it ... even the watch. I haven't even started working for these folks and I've already gotten a watch. I wonder what they give for a 5-year service award.
In other news, I now know where the Doggie ER is because I've been there ... twice. All is well now, but Bubba Magoo gave me quite the scare a couple of weeks ago. He was having some kind of reaction to something ... it was unlike anything I've ever seen. And apparently, he baffled the vet, too. But she plied him with drugs and whatever was going on stopped. And now I have all these really great pictures of Bub's insides. I'm looking for some nice frames so I can hang them in my house. Because those pictures? They were very expensive and should be properly framed and displayed. That way, every time I get hungry I can just look at one of those pictures of Bub's insides and think, "Right there is why my cupboard is bare. But damn if he doesn't have a fine looking set of lungs."
I did do one fun thing recently. T and I had a girl's evening last Friday! That's right ... we went to see Sex And The City! The experience was fun, the movie was marginal. There was a group of women sitting behind us in the theater who started chatting it up with us - they were all like, "Girls!, we are going for cocktails after the movie ... you two should come with us! It'll be FUN!" I think what they meant to say was "We're going for MORE cocktails after the movie." Nothing brings women together faster than a movie about women! After the movie, T and I popped into a shoe store that's in the same shopping center as the theater. Actually, with the exception of our new best friends who were at the bar by then, I think most of the women from the theater were in the shoe store. Of course, T and I were not buying because we are poor nursing students, but there's almost as much joy in just trying on all the weirdo shoes that you would never wear even if you could afford to buy them. The next day I saw an article in the local newspaper about a group of ten nurses who rented a limo to take them to the movie and out for cocktails afterward - each of the nurses was dressed as her favorite SATC character ... and I bet they were wearing some of those fancy shoes that you just can't wear out to any ol' place. Like I said, SATC is an experience, not just a movie.
Okay, so my new strategy to conquer the upcoming Patho exam is to assign all my loved ones diseases. We are covering diseases of the blood and cardiovascular system, so I'm doling out leukemia and malignant lymphomas and atherosclerosis, just to name a few, to my nearest and dearest. Why am I giving my loved ones diseases rather than people I do not love so much? Because if someone I love tells me they have some scary disease, the first thing I'm going to do is research every possible resource for information. I will find out everything I can about it, and try to figure out how I can make it all better. However, if I hear of someone I do not love so much coming down with something nasty, I'm going to be all like, "Karma just bit you in the butt, didn't it." Hell hath no fury, and all that. So if any of my nearest and dearest are reading this, chances are I've given you a disease, but only because I love you more than chocolate. But not to worry! You will be miraculously cured next Tuesday ... only to fall victim to a respiratory affliction.
Oh yeah, we started an additional class this week. Health Assessment. I actually look forward to this class because we will learn how to DO THINGS. NURSING THINGS. And the very first day I got to use my nifty new stethoscope and sphygmomanometer (that's a big, shiny word that means blood pressure cuff) provided by those who now own me (the people who gave me that fabulous scholarship). I love how all of my equipment has their logo on it ... even the watch. I haven't even started working for these folks and I've already gotten a watch. I wonder what they give for a 5-year service award.
In other news, I now know where the Doggie ER is because I've been there ... twice. All is well now, but Bubba Magoo gave me quite the scare a couple of weeks ago. He was having some kind of reaction to something ... it was unlike anything I've ever seen. And apparently, he baffled the vet, too. But she plied him with drugs and whatever was going on stopped. And now I have all these really great pictures of Bub's insides. I'm looking for some nice frames so I can hang them in my house. Because those pictures? They were very expensive and should be properly framed and displayed. That way, every time I get hungry I can just look at one of those pictures of Bub's insides and think, "Right there is why my cupboard is bare. But damn if he doesn't have a fine looking set of lungs."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)