Friday, February 24, 2012

What's been eating my social life??

Man, it has been a while since I've been able to sit down to type some bullshit and try to sound funny. I've missed it!! In case you've been wondering what has been taking up all of my precious blog writing time (and you missed all my facebook posts about it).......

I started nursing school!! And holy cheezits does that eat up my time. I mean, I knew nursing school was going to keep me busy, but I did not expect my brain to be so damn TIRED all the time. I've had a lot of funny stories that I have been wanting to write about, but studying usually got in the way and now I have forgotten most of them; I have to do a lot of brain dumps (teehee) to be able to smash all that new nursing information into my head. So I will do my best to fill you in on the last semester and a half of madness.

Remember when I posted about my slight note card hoarding tendency? Nursing school is a whole new monster. Just to give you an idea of how much stock you all should invest in note cards, this is about two tests worth of flash cards...
It's a little insane. Needless to say, I've been busy!

Non-nursing school related updates:
  • Boyfriend and I have moved into a house together and love it! I've heard plenty of stories about not really knowing a person until you live with them, and I can say that is partly true for boyfriend and me. We've learned new things about each other, but mostly, it's solidified what I already knew about him, and that is that he's pretty much amazing (eeeeeewww, puke! I know, I know!)
  • We had to put my sweet, old girl Snickers to sleep. She was one month away from turning 16 and stopped eating. My family didn't want to see her in pain, so we chose to surround her with love and send her out with dignity. We plan to spread her ashes in a few of the places she loved to be. 
Snickerbees! What a pretty girl :)


Anyways, let's start with semester one; Pharmacology, Professional Roles in Nursing, and Healthcare Ethics. Fun stuff. Let me remind you all that I have taken Biology, Chemistry, Anatomy & Physiology 1&2, Physics, and Advanced Anatomy & Physiology, and yet, somehow none of those prepared me for the ass-kicking that was Pharmacology. That shit is HARD, especially when you can't pronounce half of the drugs (how would you say fluoroquinolone?). Professional Roles wasn't bad, our teacher was such a sweetheart and there were no tests (!!!). Healthcare ethics was a bit tedious, but really interesting and thought provoking. I did really well grade wise (straight A's woot woot), but what I did not expect was the emotional toll that nursing school would take on me.

The first semester I cried EVERY SINGLE WEEK. At least once a week. Sometimes because I was overwhelmed, sometimes because I felt like I didn't know what the hell I was doing, sometimes because I was tired, and most of the time for no reason at all. Time for a shout out to boyfriend for being so supportive while I sniffled and babbled and made no sense at all, thanks loverbutt! Nursing school is definitely not for the weak or the alone, you need to be strong enough to push through all the emotional breakdowns and it is an absolute must that you have a strong support system, I don't know how you could do it otherwise. Thankfully, I am emotionally sound for the most part and my parents and boyfriend have been an amazing support system, so thank goodness for that.

Another thing I have learned (or re-learned) is that school bookstores are pure EVIL. Do not buy from them unless you have to! Most classes list that you are "required" to buy the newest version of each book. And a lot of the times the difference between the newest version and the last version can be as small as a few sentences. I spent around $750 for books this semester, and after finding out I could have gotten all of my books one version older, I realized I could have saved around $300, so never again will I jump the gun and buy everything new from the bookstore. What I should have done is followed my previous practice from school and found all my books at amazon.com or half.com, they are life savers!

One semester's worth of books (plus all my ATI books for every class I will take before I graduate). We're definitely going to need to get some bookshelves in this house!

This semester I only have two classes; Health Assessment and Foundations of Nursing. We are learning a lot of different nursing skills that we will come in handy no matter what type of nursing we choose to go in to. We've done everything from bed baths, ambulation, wound care, NG tubes, and assessing from head to toe. One thing I know for sure, NO would care nursing for me. Just looking at pictures of the really nasty wounds makes my stomach a little upset, and it didn't help that some of my classmates started comparing the purulence (pus) on the wounds to food products (let's just say I won't look at hummus and melted cheese the same for a while).

So that's been my life for the last eight months. Stressful, but exciting; terrifying, yet exhilarating, and I hope I can find more time to write about it so you all can revel in my misery with me!

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