Hit Me With Your Best Shot

Ok, so I need to get better about updating the blog. I get that.
The thing is, I'm having some trouble juggling everything.

I am halfway through my second week of my first semester of nursing school. So far:
We've covered nursing process and theory, dosage calculations, medication administration, insulin and heparin pharmacology/administration/calculations. And in lab (which is really pre-clinical work to make sure we don't screw things up with real patients), we've covered: bed making like a nazi, infection control, medication administration and preparation. All in 6 days.

Interesting things I've learned: "adults" who get pissy when someone else sits in "their" seat are in for quite the shock... They have some growing up to do. The funny thing is, the youngest person in the program is early 20s. These are full-on, established adults..

Also, I've discovered that I'm not scared of giving injections, and I actually like doing the dosage calcs.

Giving a bed bath freaked me out a little bit. It was about a million times worse because the instructor observing me is a Nazi and is very intimidating. She scares the crap out of me. She's not outwardly mean, but I wonder why she teaches because she isn't very patient, and has the attitude that we all suck, and hurry up and figure it out. I'm pretty lucky that my personality allows me to handle criticism without taking it to heart. I just accept it, process the changes, and do it again.

I keep telling myself that she will make me a better nurse in the end (even if her criticism isn't procedural, but personal preference), but she still scares the hell out of me.

The pace of lecture is so fast, even if I were inclined to take notes by hand (I'm not), there's no way I could keep up AND retain anything. So, I've started printing out the PowerPoint lectures, and highlighting the super very most important things, and adding memory triggers or short examples to the sections by hand. I skim the chapters in advance (which doesn't sound like much, but we're assigned 20-30 chapters a week, no kidding), and it doesn't seem like I'm missing anything yet.

I'm not sure how else I can study, or any techniques that I could add or change. A lot of people seem to make flashcards, but that's never worked well for me. I'm not going to bother, since the time investment is huge, and the payoff so small. I started out wanting to follow an SQRR method, but quickly figured out that I cannot go through 20-30 chapters multiple times. And it would be silly to outline, when an outline of the lecture is available from the PowerPoint. I'm open to suggestion, if anyone cares to share any tips with me..

How do/did you study? What would you have changed about it in hindsight?

My caffeine is officially wearing off.. So I'm going to take full advantage.
:-)

Taking Care Of Business

Well, I finally resigned from my job. In the end it was pretty simple... It all worked out well and that made me feel pretty lucky.

I finally managed to get my health and safety paperwork together. That wasn't so easy.. The NP at my doc's office ordered the wrong titer. I'm not sure how that happened, as I was very clear about what I needed and even handed her the packet to read over, which also listed what was needed clearly. So when I got my titer results, I was fairly confused when one of the tests said I was negative for an active case of Hepatitis B.

This was not news to me.

I hate having to do things at the last minute, but my life has apparently began to revolve around the last minute.

On that note, I went to orientation today... We spent most of the time with our 1st semester instructor. She's friendly, approachable, tough, and fair. I feel pretty lucky to get someone like her. I've heard so many horror stories.

I did not buy my books yet, as they add up to $1200 along with the nursing tote filled with supplies. Financial aid thinks $450 is a good amount for books, but the Nursing director said she worked it out with them to allow our book advance to be $900 instead.

Naturally, I only have $450 pending. I did send an email asking for clarification, and I suppose I will call tomorrow, because I bet they ignore the email as long as possible.

I signed a ridicuous amount of documents today, but in the most notable one, I promised to not use the supplies in my nursing tote on any real people or animals.

I also learned that I need to take a statistics class and update my math class before getting accepted to the BSN program my college partners with. Math is easy peasy, but the stats makes me want to cry a little bit.. Guess I am taking a summer class or two in 2012..

On the agenda for tomorrow: financial aid, drug test, and hopefully a nap.