Life In Price: Three years later.....

I just realized that the most probable reason the world didn't end on December 21st was because I didn't update my blog! Haha. So prepare yourselves! Because after 3 years, here is a post. FINALLY.

First of all, I realize that I have about a thousand things I should be posting: All the pictures and stories about my Paris trip, the time Lauren and I circumnavigated the globe (haha), things I've done over the past couple summers, holidays, my move to Price, UT, my rant on how horrible the play "Love Never Dies" is/was, etc. But I'm going to ease myself back into this, slowly.

So first of all, I thought I'd scan a picture of my schedule for this Spring. It's just a very brief overview of what my class schedule is like day-by-day.

Basically, I usually have class from 8:30 am-11:30 am Monday, Tuesday, and Friday.

Wednesdays and Thursdays I have clinicals (More info on clinicals in the next post!)

Mondays from 1:00-1:45 pm I have an elective nursing class that 6 of us are signed up for (that's what the asterisk* means on Mondays). It's basically a prep course for the NCLEX (National Council Licensure Examination) that we will have to take in the summer. I will take the NCLEX-PN this summer (which I have to pass in order to continue in the RN program) and then in 2014 I'll take the NCLEX-RN to get my RN. There are a lot of horror stories about how tricky the NCLEX is, so I decided to take this class, for just one credit. Plus, we have something called ATI. It is worth 10% of our grade in each lecture course. ATI is basically the prep-NCLEX. We have to take ATI quizzes all the time that are designed in the same format as the NCLEX. They're really hard, so I figure I should try to get as much practice in as I can.

The different colors indicate who is teaching that day. I can't say, "Oh, I have NURS1220 every Tuesday from 10 - 11:30, and Trish teaches it" because it changes all the time! It's confusing, which is why this schedule is a lifesaver. I would be so lost without it!

These are the classes I am signed for:

NURS 1120: Family Nursing 1 (lecture)
NURS 1130: Family Nursing 1 Clinical
NURS 1220: Nursing Process 1 (lecture)
NURS 1230: Nursing Process 1 Clinical
NURS 1240: Practical Nurse Practice (lecture)
NURS 2988: The elective NCLEX Prep class I have Mondays.

And as you can see, I pretty much have a test every Tuesday for the rest of the semester! Great. Although I must say, this semester has started out a lot easier than last semester! (Knock on wood). I know it's going to get really busy soon, especially in March, but here are a few reasons why this semester is going smoother than last:

I finally don't have that anxiety in the back of my brain questioning whether or not I'll stay in the nursing program. Last summer, while I was taking Anatomy, I was SO STRESSED out that I wouldn't get at least a B-, and then I had a million things to turn in to ensure my place-background checks, transcripts, copies of my AP scores, and then just hoping that all my classes from the U transferred over to USU-Eastern! Now that everything is transferred and taken care of, all I have to worry about is studying enough to pass the current classes.
No more uncertainty about if the coursework is manageable. Now I know what to expect from each teacher. How they lecture, and how they test. That's such a huge part of passing a course! Don't get me wrong-the coursework feels unbearable at times! Our textbooks are huge, and there is SO much reading to do every week! I never had a point last semester where I was caught up 100% with my reading, and not because I was slacking off. There was just so much reading in so little time, it's impossible to do unless you're a speed reader. And I'm not, I'm really slow. If I read any faster, I don't absorb any of the content, so I've got to dedicate a ton of time to sitting down and concentrating on reading. So now that I know this isn't Harvard Medical School, I can go into this semester knowing that most of my time will be taken up by school, but it's totally do-able.

My confidence has gone up 200% in my ability to be a nurse. Now that I've had so much more experience working with patients one-on-one (I guess I haven't had a TON of experience yet, but it's at least a thousand times more experience than I've had in the past!), I can confidently tell myself, "Yes, this is a career I can do!" And I REALLY enjoy it. I'm so excited to graduate and finally start working as a nurse! I LOVE giving injections now (that sort of sounds sadistic, but injections are quite fun to give! Not for the other person getting them though....) and even though I'm naturally more introverted, and not the most social person in the world, I don't mind all the patient contact. It's really scary at first to walk into a room and act like you know what you're doing when you DON'T! Haha. To sum up nursing school in a couple sentences, this is how it goes: Read a page or two on a procedure (if that), talk about it for thirty seconds in class, and then depending on how difficult the procedure is, practice on a mannequin once - three times if you're ambitious (or maybe not at all), then go do it on a patient. If you're lucky you can watch a nurse do it first before you try, but they seem to love to just throw us into it. The best is when you've never done it before, you've never seen anyone else do it, and then the instructor chooses you do it on a real patient and 4 of your fellow nursing students are also watching you do it for the first time. Then throw in the fact that the patient is saying "I don't want a student to do it, I don't want this to hurt any more than it has to" and your instructor comforts the patient by saying "Oh don't worry, they are so good at this. They've had lots of practice" when it's all a lie! Can you tell I'm talking from experience here? :) But every time that has happened, it's gone a lot better than I every thought it would. The first time I gave an injection the lady was SO nervous, but I'm sure I was more nervous! I was trying so hard to keep my hand steady. But I did it, and the lady was surprised when it was over because she didn't feel anything. Whew! But I am always very safe and cautious about what I do-I always have an instructor with me to watch , and so I can ask a thousand questions to make sure I am doing everything right. Plus, if I really don't feel comfortable doing something, I will tell them I don't feel comfortable, and they have no problem doing it first so I can see how it's done. It's all about quality patient care anyway!

Basically, I know that I can do this. One of my clinical instructors, Laura, even told me at the end of last semester when she and I sat down for our one-on-one evaluation, that I've "got what it takes". She also said that the "patients are really comfortable around you" and noted how nice I was to the patients, because she said some people really aren't. Yay! That made me feel SO great, you have no idea. It was wonderful to have another nurse look at me and honestly tell me that she also thinks I can do it.

I'm going to stop chattering now, obviously I need to post tons more because I have more to say than I even realized! Here are a few a pictures from school!

In the break room at Castleview Hospital. (From front to back, L-R: Dolly, Celessta, Mikka, Ashlyn, Nicole, Courtney, me)

Orientation at Castleview Hospital. Our entire LPN class! From front to back, Left to Right: Trent (in the blue shirt), Adam, Nakhoon, Courtney, Lindsey, Nicole, Rhonda, Dolly (standing in the magenta shirt), Raeann (pink shirt), Jisoo, Celessta, Sarah, Mikka, me, Ashlyn, Julie, Nicole (behind Raeann), Karen, Ariel, Lexi, Jen, Maddie, Catherine, Brooke Cooper, Brooke Brady, and Andy.

Taken on Thursday, while at the Nursing Home for our clinical. Celessta, me, and Raeann.

Also taken on Thursday. Ew. I hate this picture! It is quite obvious that I woke up at 5:15 am and then had to sit and wait in my FREEZING cold car for it to warm up enough to drive. This is me going over a patient's chart. He was a new admit, and my assignment for the day was to learn all about admission and discharge documentation and protocol. Sounds exciting, right? (Although every time I'm doing something boring in school, I just have to take a minute and be thankful for the fact that I'm doing something that is actually something I'll be doing all the time as a nurse, and that I'm NOT sitting in the basement of the chemistry building at the U titrating acids and bases, working on a lab bookwork!!!!)