How My Instructor Affected My Life

Isn't it interesting how these type of instructores always seem to pick the younger students for their victims. Afraid that a person with more life experience would realize - hey, I'm paying your salary, and, if I'm a failure it's because you've failed as an instructor. May many young students receive hope and strenght from this story and may many patients have the good fortune to be under raekaylvn's care.

I would have given anything to have an RN instructor like you! Even before I was able to start the program I got jipped by the pharmachology teacher. He gave us this huge test only the second time we had class. The test seemed like a test that would & should have been given only at the end of the class to test us on what we had studied.

I could never figure it out that the instructors were "out to get students". Was this some kind of test to see how tough we would be as floor nurses? Seemed very petty to me. I felt "set up" so many times. I was not a kid. I was 33 yrs old with 2 little kids and a husband, so all of this was not easy.

Back to the pham test. When I finally took my last stab at passing pharm math and got my test back, I noticed some of the answers had been erased! But not having any way to prove it, I failed by .3 of a point!!!. The head of the nursing program came out in the hallway where a lot of us were standing and she came over to me and said, "I know you think you passed, but you didn't!" "I want to see you in my office." There she continued to lecture me saying "we all can't be astronauts!". I am thinking just let me out of here, I have had enough and I think that is exactly what she wanted ,yet there are complaints there is a nursing shortage, of course there is.
Anyway I went on the LPN school and passed with flying colors. At my last job, 10 yrs ago, I was a charge nurse on a subacute floor with RNs under me! I was the only LPN working that shift. My supervisor said I was better than most of his RNs because my heart was in my job and I did a better job than they did. All I wanted to do was be a floor nurse.
[........] I never knew someone could be so heartless. I guess my heart was in nursing too much. I am epileptic so to be able to go back to school and not be discriminated against, there are no words for the cloud I was on. This was my dream come true, at last I could be the nurse I had only been called by my father.
Now at 55 I only wish all of this anomosity would go away so I could be the happy person I used to be. She has no idea the resentment I feel for what she took away from me. It wasn't necessary. I wasn't even through the program yet. Why did she have to beat me down? I possibly could have failed along the way and that would have been that. Amen.

This is good to hear - that there is at least 1 normal instructor in the world.

I must say, while there are definitely some terrible teachers, there are also some students who seem to do everything in their power to give instructors a hard time. When I was teaching, I had students who habitually arrived late, came unprepared, hid out during clinicals, and viewed me as their enemy no matter how much I tried to be fair with them, tried to teach them what they needed to know, and bent the rules to try to help them. I knew they had children to care for, jobs to work to stay alive, and many responsibilities besides school.

I tried to balance their needs with the fact that I was supposed to be preparing them to care for human lives and preparing them to be able to be employed. I felt responsible to teach them to be punctual, reliable, & time-conscious, among other things. It is very hard to teach responsibility to some students.

Some students tried to befriend me. I kept my distance and probably seemed unfriendly but felt it was necessary, for their benefit, mine, and the benefit of their future patients. I tried hard to pass everyone but let the students decide, by their efforts and by their successes or failures, what became of their attempts to become nurses.

I'm not implying that anyone here on this board was or is a problem student, only presenting a glimpse into the head of an Instructor, for whatever it's worth.

Stay Strong... Some of these instructors out here are on serious power-trips! I've experienced something similar and after being so mad, sad, and feeling down, I realized that only an inadquate educator would believe that shattering one's confidence was adequate education. It's on her..not you.. Just do your best and document these things. If she did it to you, she definitely did it to others...Just keep a journal, time and date in a mini notebook you can keep in your notebook pocket, like a diary... then if you should have to defend yourself in a "grading situation" you will not have to rely on anecdotal recollection of what occurred.

I don't think it is necessarily the instructor's fault if a student fails. Plenty of students are quite able to fail all by themselves.

part of being paid to be an Instructor involves weeding out those students who are not meeting school requirements. Some students don't do the necessary work, some have attendance or tardiness problems, some cheat, some do not do the necessary preparation prior to Clinicals, some have too much going on outside of school and don't study enough, and so forth. There ARE some students who are in school at the wrong time in their lives or who should not be in N. School at all. Yeah, there are some psycho Instructors, too.