I am in the throws of my 4th semester of nursing school. So far things haven't been too bad. I love clinical, and I am managing to keep up with my class work. I haven't gotten too stressed out yet... that will come toward April, I'm sure.
I am taking Medical Surgical Nursing II, Community and Public Health Nursing, and the ABC's of PQRST. Med Surg is my big class where I learn the bulk of nursing within a hospital setting. The exams are really brutal... you haven't taken an exam until you have taken an exam full of NCLEX style questions. It's like trickery... but it's not. Last semester I took classes divided into 8 weeks which meant that I had a test every single week. That was tough. I am so glad this semester there is actually room to breathe between each exam. This decreases the stress level by so much.
Community and Public Health Nursing does not have any exams, but it has a lot of busy-work and projects. I can't decide if I would rather take exams or do projects, ha. This class is not as consistent as I would like; we don't have class every week, and we have a sporadic clinical schedule. That is the worst aspect of this class, though. I feel like I am winging it a lot of the time.
The ABC's of PQRST is all about reading EKG strips. I really love the professor in this class. She is so smart and she explains things very well. I think I am going to learn a lot about the heart this way. The heart has always taken a lot of effort for me to understand pathology, but between my Pediatrics course and this course I feel like I understand it a whole lot better than I did.
Now for some annoying chit chat about grades... you can skip over this section if you really don't care about grades. When I finished my pre-requisites I had a 4.0 GPA. From my first Nursing exam on I have been plagued with B's. The grading system is a lot tougher than it was at Ozarks Technical Community College. Where an A was 90-100, at the school I am at an A is 93-100... B is 84-92... C is 75-83... so if you make an 92.85% you have made a B... that happened to me in a few courses... I just couldn't squeeze out that A. So, I have been cursed with a 3.1-3.0 GPA... except for last semester! I managed to make 3 A's and 1 B... so, I ended up having a high enough GPA to get on the Dean's List with a 3.692. Woo hoo! I miss making straight A's, but I'm trying the best I can, and in the end, the result is the same... I will be a nurse. That is all that matters.
I basically just wanted to get my thoughts down on this semester and how it has been going. That's all from me, and unless I get the urge to post before the end of the semester, the next blog post will be the middle of May.
Enjoy the next few months of life, everyone.
