The spring semester has begun! You would think, after beginning numerous new courses, starting two previous semesters in this accelerated nursing program, I would be prepared for the first day of a new semester. Wrong. I went to school on Monday, knowing we had a long day of lab, meetings and lecture and still I left thinking I am doomed to fail and so overwhelmed I almost wanted to cry. With that said, I came home, whined to Erin, ate some dinner, did a workout, watched a show and went to bed. Way to start strong, Katie!
I had to remind myself, and I am still reminding myself, the beginning is always overwhelming because we get a run down of everything we will be doing over the course of 15 weeks. I am lucky as I only have 17 credits this semester, whereas a lot of other students have 20. I do not have to take research, so I have a lighter work load this time, hooray! Despite that, I am still overwhelmed. On the other hand, I am learning all about kids, so that is wonderful!! So far, in the first two lectures, I have been spot on with infant, toddler preschool and young school age development which is a bit of a confidence boost. Adolescents scare me and I feel less familiar with their stages of development. I am looking forward to learning more about caring for children in the hospital. I can't wait to learn tricks from the seasoned nurses. My favorite professor is also teaching us again for some of the peds lectures. She is great, very thorough, demanding and really intimidates me. She is also my clinical instructor, which flat out scares me. I know I will be learning a lot as she will keep her expectations very high. My clinical group is composed of the the seven (including me) that will be taking the service trip over spring break. Briefly looking over our schedule/syllabus for clinical, it seems as though our instructor has incorporated some of our prep work for the trip into our clinical requirements. This is great! We will be doing well child screenings on the kids on our trip, but also required to provide teaching about health promotion, safety, and nutrition. Our instructor also informed us, when she asked the school what they would like us to focus on with the kids (4th graders-8th graders) they quickly responded. It looks like we will be teaching the students about puberty! Awesome, that won't be awkward at all!! We will get some guidelines to follow, as the school is Catholic. More to come on that later :)
In addition to my pediatric and OB clinical and lecture, I also have Leadership. This class seems interesting and like a lot of work. We have group projects, which I am not a huge fan of. What is most challenging is finding times to all meet up. Our first meeting is right smack in the middle of my one day off this week, 2pm on Friday. Not awesome, but it's what ha to be done. My group is the first group to present. We have to teach the entire class for a total of a 60 minute lecture/presentation followed by 15 minutes of a Q & A with the class. We have two weeks to prepare. Awesome. The plus to being first is we can set the standard AND once we are done, we don't have to worry about it the rest of the semester! I am still nervous, per usual. Another aspect of Leadership is the clinical part of the course. We finish our finals a week before the semester ends. That final week we will be doing a total of 60 hours (in about five days) in the clinical setting. I could possibly have five 12 hour shifts in a row! We get to rank our top two choices and we are placed by our GPA. We were told this is the one and only time our GPA will play a role. I am worried. Not so much about my GPA, it's not the best, but I am positive it's not the worst! I am worried because we were told yesterday there are 220 students to place and there are only 24 pediatric spots. Hmmmm. We were also told if we choose peds or OB for our #1 choice, do not put that for our second choice because it is so limited. I now have the dilemma of deciding do I put a specific unit/hospital I would like for pediatrics OR do I say I want to do labor and delivery. I have no clue as of now! I almost wish I could experience both peds and OB before making the decision, but I will only have had my peds experience before I have to make that decision. I will be interrogating all my friends who are in OB first to hopefully make my decision a tad easier.
Speaking of my friends in OB, all of the people I hung out with since the beginning of this program are in OB first. This means our class times do not match. I am in the morning sessions and they are in the afternoon. Yesterday I almost felt like the first day of school all over again. I know a lot of people in my class, but they aren't my buddies! I am sure I will be making new friends fast, it's just a bit lonely at the beginning. I like to sit in the front (yes, I am that student) as do my friends. I find it helpful and to keep me focused. I sat near the back once and was so distracted by the amount of computer screens (a lot on Facebook or playing games) so if I am in the front, I only have my screen and the professor to look at.
Two days in and I am already stressing about the work load, studying, projects, assignments and of course clinical. I am also SO excited to be learning about kids, and babies and even more excited to see pediatric nurses in action. Hopefully I do not let my nerves take over!
One last thing, one of the guys in my class was saying yesterday; now that we are over halfway through, we can count down to graduation instead of how long we have been in the program!! Only 195 days until graduation!!!!!!
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