Well almost, I have one more day. It's funny, in the Pre Nursing Student Section I made a post many months ago for those of us starting now and how excited I was and how I would be here my first day to share it with everyone and so forth and so on.
So here it is Thursday and I am finally finding I have a small ounce of energy to come make my post and only because someone asked me in the other forum or else I would have probably just waited until this weekend.
It has been a good week, I am mainly so tired and stuff because I am a night person and I am adjusting to waking up at 6 a.m. every morning and trying to go to bed early and having class every day all day. That has been by far the biggest struggle. I don't have to be up at 6 every day but I figured it would be better to stick to a routine for me and my youngest kid that just started childcare as well. Anyway, also to get parking you have to get there early and I mean REALLY EARLY, our school had a 31% increase in students and parking is horrific so I get to school early and can study or what not on days my classes don't start first thing.
Monday we had Orientation, we had a drawing thing and I won (along with like 15 other students) and I picked a book called "How to Survive and Maybe Even Love Nursing School, A Guide FOR students BY students."I haven't started reading it yet but it looks good.
We meet our clinical instructors and found out where we will do our Clinicals which first semester will be long term care. My clinical site will be about 10 mins from my house so that is nice. They tried to group people by their home addresses. We have a huge class size, biggest they have ever done and it's 50 students. Thankfully for most labs and math classes we are in 2 groups so only our Fundamentals and Pharmacology lecture classes will have all of us.
We meet all the nursing instructors and they all seem really great, the ones we have had doing Fundamental lectures have just been awesome and so pleasant and seem like they truly want to see us succeed. It's a two person team and both are currently going for their masters right now so they say how they feel what we are going through and it has helped them more. For example, one lady is trying something new and telling us what PAGES and paragraphs to focus our reading on instead of saying just read chapter 1 and 2. She says to just skim the rest and focus on the things she highlights and she is very thorough.
We also have so much free help from our Learning Opportunity Center that they came in and talked to us about that honestly if a student is determined to succeed there is no reason they can't. We have the Math learning lab, we have a Pharm Drop in study thing if you need help with Pharm, we have free tutoring from 5 RN's, free counseling and even couple counseling if you need it, stress management, test anxiety work shops etc. etc. all free so the help is there if you seek it out.
So anyway, so far I don't feel overwhelmed, but it's only the first week. Lecture has been good, the math teacher for Dosage and Calc seems wonderful and she says she has never had a student that was passing her class not pass the Dosage and Calc exam within the 3 tries at the 100% required.
We start Pharm next week and had our first lab today. It was simple stuff, they said today was mainly the stuff you learn in the CNA classes so for the CNA's in our group it would just be review.
So that was about it, I get home and I am so tired that my kids are freaked out that mom is ready for bed before them, especially since I was always going to bed around 3 in the morning. With my kids starting school last week this week was also back to school night at 2 schools and at my sons middle school it lasted until 9:30 and had first foot ball games and so on, so yea I will use this weekend to recharge and hopefully my body gets more accustomed and the new sleep cycle gets easier as the weeks go on.
Oh we also have a nursing club for the National Student Nurses Association. I am joining that, it looks like a lot of fun and support and a good foot in, our school is trying to start the club up this semester so hopefully there is enough interest to keep a local chapter but NSNA (hope I got that right) will be having a convention in Co Springs in Oct. and I am hoping to go.
So that was my first week as a nursing student, minus tomorrow. but tomorrow is a pretty lite day, after I am going to the spa and getting a facial LOL
