Sunday, September 16, 2012

C is for Clinical, and other things...

Surprisingly Thursdays test scores were posted on Friday.  I peeked with one eye and finally saw my grade and was rather excited.  I got an 82, so at first, of course, I was like "WOO HOO!! A B!!!" Considering everything that when on that day, and it being my first test, I was pretty excited.  Then I remembered we had a different scoring scale, which brought be down to a C.  I was one sad panda.  Still not too bad, but Im definitely looking forward to doing better.  No rest for the weary this weekend though as we have our first 1300 exam tomorrow.  

This weekend was also our first weekend of clinicals.  Due to privacy issues, I cant tell you where Im doing them, but the staff there is pretty great.  There was definitely a lot of confusion though as there is not a lot of room ANYWHERE on the floor, and I dont think the staff quite knew we were going to be there or what was going on.  We all worked together to make everything run smoothly.  One of my classmates and I spent time with the PCA, who was also a nursing student at CSU.  He was great to work with an explained a lot to us.  He had a great rapport with all of his patients and I believe he is going to be a great nurse.  The RN we worked with seemed to be a fairly recent grad herself as she was young,  She took a lot of time explaining everything since she only had 4 patients and allowed us to ask questions.  I felt like I was involved, even though we were only allowed to observe.  We did get to make a bed which, although its super basic and not exciting on a normal day what-so-ever, it was nice to get to do SOMETHING.  Definitely looking forward to the time when we get to do a lot more.  I think....

Friday, September 14, 2012

Stress, Stress and More Stress!!!

Everyone is always stressed for the first exam.  The uncertainty of knowing what the test is going to be like is killer, and throwing a whole new style of test question on top of that is no joke either.  This alone is stressful enough.  In my world, however, the world said, you know what? This isnt enough.  Lets add more!

At work, our NY CLIA inspection that was supposed to be Wednesday ran over into Thursday.  We came out ok but it was still rather stressful.  Left work at my usual time, around 3pm.  I take the Rapid to work so I was looking forward to the next 40 minutes where I could do some last minute study and review.  Then the wheels fell off...

As I was waiting for the Rapid, I was alerted that all trains east of Tower City are down, a shuttle will take us to the healthline and we can take that to Tower City.  So I jump on the healthline and make my way downtown.  Once we got into sprinting distance I sprinted through public square, through Tower City and onto a Rapid. In the meantime my Dad called to see if I wanted him to come get me, but since it was 4:10 already I didnt think he would be able to make it from Strongsville in time and as I knew as long as I caught the next Rapid I was going to be ok.   The Rapid was due to leave at 4:16 and still gave me time to make it to Westshore in time for our test at 5pm but I was going to be cutting it very close.  Then the announcement was made that the train wasnt leaving until 4:30.  I thought I was officially screwed.  Not to be defeated, I bolted off the train up into public square where I caught a taxi out to campus.  20 minutes and $50 later I made it to campus just in time to make our test, with about 10 minutes to spare.

The test wasnt as bad as I thought it would be, but I still dont think I knocked it out of the park.  A lot of my classmates and I were in lab after class and everyone was discussing some of the more "iffy" questions, which all made us feel a lot worse about how we thought we did.  I guess we will all have to wait until Monday to find out officially. 

Last but certainly not least, thanks to Christina for giving me a ride to my car last night and to Elizabeth for checking in with me throughout the whole public transportation ordeal.  You ladies are awesome and I am so blessed to have you in my class!!

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Calling Christian Grey!

Another week of school in the books!

While it was a short week, it felt super long.  The week started with lab and it started with anxiety.  In class the week before, our instructor told us we needed to complete chapters 3,4,8 and 9 for lab the following week, which is what I did being the good little nursing student.  However I made the mistake of not verifying this with the lab schedule, which told us we needed to complete 8,9, and 10.  Luckily I was not the only person who only listened to the instructor and our lab preceptor was nice enough to give us a reprieve.  The rest of lab was vitals and restraints.  Of course you cant have a room with about 15 women, bring up restraints, and not discuss whether you have or have not read the 50 Shades series and how fast you have read it. (Of course I have read it! Each book in less than 3 days. I loved it, no matter how cheesy.  Dont judge!) I love my lab group, especially my instructor, because we are able to joke and have fun with the subject matter while still getting our objectives accomplished.

Speaking of torture, all evening student had to meet at Metro campus on Wednesday night for our Clinical Orientation.  Before heading over, I made a quick stop to pick up my ID badge for clinicals and was lucky enough to run into a fellow classmate who was awesome enough to give me a ride to Metro campus (Thanks, Elizabeth!) We arrived just in time for the start.  The orientation began with a presentation by the Tri-C librarian asking who completed their library homework....WHAT?! My fellow westshore mates and I looked at each other in horror as we had no clue what the woman was talking about.  She went on for about a half hour about how to use the library.  I thought this was a waste of valuable study time.  Everyone has completed pre-reqs to get into the program, and I am sure in at least one of these classes they have used the library.  To throw on an extra busy work assignment, which apparently takes an hour to complete, on top of all of the other work we have to do is frustrating.

Following the librarian we had a presentation by the book manufacturer about our books and how they are available as ebooks.  This lead me to wonder, "Why are we hearing about this the second week of the semester when we have already bought our books?" While the presentation did have a lot of useful information, I think it would have been much better to have the presentation BEFORE classes started so we are better educated about what books are needed and the cost involved and so forth.  However, I thought it was rude when they asked for feedback about the process and every slightly negative comment, no matter how constructive it was, was met with a defensive response from the Tri-C representative basically saying that all of our feedback was irrelevant because WE didnt do enough.  Note to everyone: If you dont want to hear the answer, dont ask the question.  No one is perfect and we were just offering our feedback on the process because you asked for it.  I thought the book rep did do an excellent job in presenting all of the features of the books, even if some of them were too late.

Next we were given study tips for surviving nursing school.  I thought these were great, especially the part where they broke down the NCLEX style of questions.  The problem with this portion was they were done at 7:20, while we werent meeting with clinical instructors until 8:00.  So instead we wasted another 40 minutes, which has now upped my lost study time for tonight to about 80 minutes.  Extremely frustrating, especially considering the math test out we had the next day.

Finally we got to meet our clinical instructors and after meeting mine, I am totally excited for clinicals.  Any anxiety I had was immediately erased and I cant wait until next weekend to get started!

Thursday nights class started with our first ever math test out.  I wasnt too worried about it to begin with since Im pretty good with math as long as I have a calculator.  The test out was so easy you almost didnt even need it! We all took about 5 minutes to celebrate getting over that hurdle before the stress started setting in over the first exam for 1450 next Thursday. Commence the hair pulling! (But please stow your twitchy palm... ;))

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

One and Done!

As of Thursday night I officially survived my first week of nursing school, sinus infection and all!Yay!

Last Tuesday I had my first lab class which was a lot of fun! Our lab instructors are very out going and make learning the lab material, no matter how boring, fun.  I think my favorite part of the lab was when our instructor said, "Ok, lets move on from all of the poop and pee stuff, its gross!" Made me feel a lot better that I am not the only one who has issues with this.  It was also nice to interact more with my classmates and learn more about them.  I couldnt believe how many people are doing this with multiple kids at home! That would definitely be a lot to handle! I have so much respect for them, especially those with younger kids. 

It was nice to have a nice long weekend after the start of the semester, especially after being sick all week.  Gave me time to catch up on sleep.  I also spent a lot of time reading and studying.  I felt bad because I could tell my boyfriend was really bored.  I tried to keep him entertained, too, but I wasnt very successful. Saturday we spent a lot of time watching football together but Sunday was a struggle.  I thought about going to Strongsville for a study group meet up I saw on the ADN message board, but it was at 6:30 - right at dinner time.  That and the guilt of leaving my boyfriend home alone over the holiday weekend when Im sure he would have rather been out doing something else kept me at home.  By Monday we were ready to break out of the house for a while. All in all it was kind of a blah weekend but I feel like I got quite a bit accomplished schoolwise.  Im looking forward to next weekend when my boyfriend is gone all day Saturday for the OSU game.  This way I dont feel so guilty about ignoring him since he wont be there :)

I am definitely looking forward to this week.  Tonight is lab, where we will be learning to take vitals.  Im pretty good in this area but I enjoy helping other students learn.  Its always fun to learn other people's tricks on how to do them efficiently.  Tomorrow there is a big meeting at Metro where we will be with all of the other evening classes but more importantly, we get to meet with our clinical groups! Even though it is going to make my weeks ALOT longer, I am definitely looking forward to actually being in a hospital and putting skills to work.  Thursday night is our big math test out, which I am not worried about at all.  The math for me is rather basic.  I did find it kind of odd though that my first thought yesterday morning was 3 teaspoons equal 1 tablespoon.  I really need to get out more....

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

1 Down, 500 some to go!

And the moment we've all been waiting for....the first day of class!!!

Leading up to this day I was a ball of nerves.  Finally getting my feet wet helped to calm me down somewhat but there's still the labs and clinicals and that oh-so-important first exam that looms overhead to keep the nerves on high alert for a while. Yay.

In the fast few weeks, I have been trying to get a few fun things in before class starts.  Ive been zip lining, visiting with friends and family, and this past weekend went to Louisville, KY to help my sister move.  Its been a lot of fun and has helped me keep my mind off the inevitable.  

Of course all of the fun culminated in to either getting a cold or having allergies flare up.  Im banking on the second one since on top of everything I haven't been able to sleep well lately. I also strained my left upper arm on Sunday night bringing my bags in the house.  So with all of the excitement of  going to school already wreaking havoc on me, I woke up Monday morning bright and early completely miserable.  My left arm was screaming, my nose was burning, and it was hot and stuffy.  Happy Monday!

I got to Westshore about 1.5 hours early.  On most weeks this is going to be the time when I get my lab practice in but since we haven't had lab yet, this is not an option.  So instead I sat and did some reading to try to get ahead a bit.  Finally everyone else started filing in around 6:20.  I recognized a lot of people from orientation and/or the various nursing Facebook groups.  I always feel creepy saying, "Hey don't I know you from Facebook?!" I felt at a disadvantage since a lot of the other students already knew each other from taking the pre-reqs at Tri-C.  While I took the chemistry at Tri-C, it was all online so not many opportunities to meet people.  

What we used to call "Syllabus Day" back in the day, always sucks. This one was a little extra excruciating since the instructor had to go through basically the same information twice since there was a possibility that there was someone taking only 1300 or 1450.  We did get to touch on some material from the books and even had some time to meet some of our classmates as we broke off into groups to discuss what our personal nursing theory was. It was nice to get to meet some people, even though Im sure it will take a while to remember peoples names.  

Today is the first day of lab.  Wouldn't be too nervous if it wasn't for the fact that I forgot my stethoscope at home.  Ugh. Our  instructor called tonight's lab "Bed, Bath and Beyond" so hopefully I wont need it.  Something tells me though that this lab will not be anywhere near as fun as the store (just got a new 20% off coupon yesterday! Cant wait to use it!) 

Good luck to everyone else who is starting their first semester as well as all of you starting semester 2,3, or 4! 

Monday, August 13, 2012

Here We Go!


Here we go!

I have decided to keep a blog of my nursing school journeys at Tri-C.  The primary reason is so that when all is said and done, I can look back at all my experiences both positive and negative.  The second reason is so that future nursing students can read through the experiences to help ease their anxieties and maybe help them decide if this is the right move for them.  Because lets be honest, nursing school isnt for everyone.

Over the course of this blog, I also hope to include some other people's stories. Obviously each person's path to and through the Tri-C Nursing Program are not all the same and I more than anyone am interested in that journey.

My basic story: I am a Clevelander born and raised.  I have a Bachelors degree in Natural Sciences and have worked in all aspects of healthcare.  I worked throughout college at Southwest General as a lab assistant / phelbotomist where I developed a love for working with patients and working in the ER.  Ultimately it is my goal to end up there once again.  I worked as a Microbiologist for 6 years and had the opportunity to travel the world and experience how other labs and hospitals work. While I had discussed the idea of going back to school for nursing for about a year, it was a coworker who gave me the final push, as she was working towards becoming a nursing student as well. While completing my pre-reqs, I also decided to become an EMT-B through Tri-C's program (great experience! email me if you want to know more :)) This fall I will begin the ADN program at Tri-C at the Westshore Campus in the evenings.

I am extremely excited to begin this new journey and share it with whomever wants to read along and share in the journey.