Christmas Break...

So, I'm halfway through the Christmas break and I can't believe it's half over already... I'm looking forward to the new semester. Mental Health and Family Health are going to be interesting, especially since they are in the same semester :) I have learned so much already and I'm really excited to be moving on and that I've done well in the crazy 1st semester. I'm happy with my B average and I hope that I can keep it up in the future.

Clinicals :)

I really enjoyed clinicals this week. I had an awesome experience and I got to do some things I've never done before. I really enjoyed oncology more than I thought I would. I feel invigorated and ready to soldier on with nursing school..such a blessing since I had been letting my nerves get the best of me. Now I'm ready to study for all of the upcoming tests in the next 8 days and then go back to clinicals :)

Open Lab

I really like to go to Open Lab. Every time I do, I find it to be really helpful. Today I went to practice IV Push (which I thought I knew how to do) and then discovered that I was really fumbling with it. So the instructor walked us through it and I feel much better, but I'm going back in the morning to practice some more before clinicals.

The thing that I really took from the experience though was some really good advice. To go in to testing and tell the instructor exactly what I'm doing. How much medicine I drew up, how much normal saline I mixed it with, how long I'm going to infuse it, and that I looked it up in the book. To BE CONFIDENT and act like I have it and I will do fine with it.

So that will be added to my current personal goals of the semester, which are to be more confident at clinicals and to have the assessment memorized so that I no longer need a cheat sheet and I can just do it from head to toe.

I'm just trying to take it one day at a time and remember that every day is a gift. ;)

Care Plans and Clinicals

Clinical paperwork and care plans seem to take me a very long time to complete. I am almost done with them now, but it is 1:17AM on a Saturday night. I want to finish so I can move on to reading some more med surge and pharm chapters. I need to get faster at this..lol.

Final Thoughts....

I am so happy and relieved to be finished with the final and to have passed!! I really enjoyed Fundamentals, but I'm glad to be able to move on.

The hardest thing about the class is that I could not figure out how to study for it. I tried two different study methods and got pretty close to the same grade. I'm not unhappy about it at all, since I am finishing with a B, but I'n still stumped because I can't figure out how to get better.

I really liked the Elder Reminiscence assignment because it was so interesting and enjoyable to talk to the person I got to talk to. I am also one of those weird people who enjoys research and I like writing papers, which made it even better. I retained the information that I researched and remember most of the conversation from that day still, so I felt like I learned from the assignment.

I also liked the Nutrition assignment (mostly I enjoyed eating and listening to everyone else's presentations). I didn't really like giving my own part of the presentation because talking in front of a large group is really not my thing. I did like the research part, though. I found WAY more information than there was time to share. If anyone is interested I have a friend who has just been certified in Qigong (pronounced "chee gung") and is teaching a class in it on Monday nights. ;)

I also found that I remembered nutrition pretty well for the final.

So, that's it. Thanks for a great class :D

Nearing the end of our first session!!

Wow!! I can't believe we are 5 days away from being done with Fundamentals. The last 8 weeks have really flown by!! I feel like I have learned ALOT in a very short amount of time. I just hope I can regurgitate it for the final:)

So, with that in mind, my plan is to study, study, study!!!

Our groups last clinical was today. It went really well even though we added all the extra paperwork :)

Good luck on the final everyone!!

Stressful Week

This week was really stressful for me. On Sunday night my refrigerator died. The compressor froze. So my husband went to get a new one Monday and discovered that in Tallahassee you can't just go get a refrigerator. You have to order it and have it delivered. So no refrigerator until Tuesday. We lost all of our groceries.
Then we had the culture assignment on Wednesday, which was a lot of fun, but nerve wracking for me since I don't particularly enjoy public speaking. I loved listening to everyone else's though and the class was super enjoyable!! Lab was great that afternoon, too.
I gave 2 weeks notice at my job this week too. It's a relief but I am sad too because I really like working there and I like the people I work with. I still have to work every weekend until the final, but will be reprieved when B session starts.
We also switched our phone and internet from Century Link to Comcast, which was a HUGE mistake because we have recieved the worst customer service ever from Comcast in the last 3 days. The installer tech did a shoddy job installing it in the first place and left our house with only internet and phone working, but not the cable because he thought we had a bad line somewhere. He could not fix it and did not want me to call Comcast to get it fixed until after the weekend so he wouldn't get in trouble. On Thursday after everyone in the neighborhood came home we had slower than dial up speed. By 9:00 we lost internet entirely. We called and set up an apppointment for someone to come Friday. After calling 5 times on Friday between the two of us and being assured someone would come, no one came. We still have no internet or phone (which also had died). I started to cancel the entire thing last night but the guy at the call center has asked for one more chance and said they will fix it today and they will comp us if we will be patient a little longer. I will be very surprised if that actually occurs. So I'm blogging from the work computer. I went in an hour early to do it.
Clincals was awesome, but for some reason it makes me want to sleep all day after I leave.
So there's my week. Next week should be better. :)