75 questions. 1 hour.

Tried the Pearson Vue trick and got the good pop-up.

It helps with the anxiety a smidge. I won’t completely breathe a sigh of relief until I see my name and license number on the BON.

Will update in a few days with my very own NCLEX story. Keep look out!

AAANNNDDDDD…it’s done. Thanks to all of you who have stuck with me through this hectic ride and empathized with my long drawn bouts of blogging inactivity. I really appreciate it all and I’m glad I had this place as an outlet and had a few people interested in my journey.You guys rock. ON TO NCLEX!

So communications course I took this summer assuming it’d be an easy A?

Nah, not so much. Well, it’s not difficult..just time consuming.

Anyways, we recently gave our demonstrative speeches and I decided to show the class how to make banana bread. I put together a PowerPoint of me making it and decided to go for a vintage 50’s homemaker kind of feel, thus the picture I’m sharing. 

Cute, huh? We wear those vintage white nursing dresses and caps for pinning ceremonies in my nursing program. I should totally do the same look, huh??

After completing a couple of 12’s with my preceptor,

I learned some.

I learned that there is A LOT more paperwork dealing with nursing than I thought.

Started my summer course today..

Oh man, a course that has NOTHING to do with nursing?? It’s surprisingly refreshing. We were already assigned a research assignment of sorts that I accepted wholeheartedly while grinning from ear to ear.

Problem is…while going over the assigned speeches (communications class), the only topics I could think up to do said speeches on were related to nursing……

I get these bouts of confidence when I’m just like, “NCLEX aint nothing, bro! Totally gonna pass it. TOTALLY!”

And then 5 minutes later I’m in a fetal position and crying.

This is so stressful! I’ve done a live Kaplan review (it was part of my nursing program) and I really don’t know if it did more harm than good?

People never told me that nursing school exams were different from regular biology exams. People also never told me that these NCLEX questions are a completely different beast compared to those nursing school exams.

Somebody hold me.

A fourth of the way through!

Just a little update.

As the title says, I’m a fourth of the way through with my final semester of nursing school! I now have a general understanding as to why it is considered the ‘make it or break it’ semester. First of all, it’s a 30 hour work week consisting of one 6 hour lecture and two 12 hour shifts. Secondly, in our past med surg 1 course, we were introduced one major body system at a time. We just had our first exam a week ago and it consisted of the renal system, the cardiovascular system, AND the respiratory system. Obviously, that’s A LOT of studying. And while on the topic of exams, they’re pretty lengthy at 100 questions each with the question styles more on the ‘application’ side of things. You need to KNOW your info and know how to APPLY it.

I’m normally a loner when it comes to studying, but I decided to try something new this semester and hook up with two other nursing buddies and start a study group of sorts. We meet once a week at our local Panera and just mull through objectives and PowerPoints. It has been helpful in that we are able to split tasks up. For instance, we each assigned ourselves a system and made disease/med charts accordingly and shared them with one another. Also, explaining information that one of my study buddy’s might not understand only further solidifies the info in my own knowledge base. We are also able to explain things in a way that’s more easily understood.

The study group has been really helpful, but it takes a great deal of discipline. It’s too easy to get off track and start venting, gossipping, etc..lol.

Oh, I forgot to mention the random assignments! We no longer have assigned major care plans this semester, but we do have a mini care plan and a journal entry due every week based off of clinical. Also, we need to do case studies and there are POP QUIZES! Who does that?!?! Their basic purpose is to make sure we, as students, stay on top of our reading prior to lectures. Unfortunately, I can’t do that. I do reading AFTER I’ve been lectured on the info. Ah, thus is life.

ANYWHOOOOO, I’m often creeping on tumblr, so don’t be afraid to hit the ask box for anything!! Hope everyone is doing well!!

Whoa whoa whoa!

Why is it never the actual RN’s, but nurse techs that feel the need to tell me that I don’t really want to be an RN?

Really? REALLY??

Most of the time they sound more condescending than helpful. Annoying.

Some news!

So I’m sure a majority of my followers are aware of how dire the job market is for nurses at the current time, especially for inexperienced new grads.

Anywho, I’ve been pretty mum about it for fear of jinxing it, but I’ve been going through a process to try and qualify for a nursing scholarship that would also ensure a job as an RN upon passing boards. It consisted of an application, an essay, and an actual interview. Long drawn process, applied in December actually!! But I got some news today and….

I GOT THE SCHOLARSHIP!

YIPPPEEEEEEEE! I am OVER the moon right now!!

Seriously.

So an instructor comes in to talk to our class about prepping for our upcoming and final semester of the program.

“This summer do some reading, especially from your Brunner’s med-surg book.”

*raise hand* “What exactly should we focus on in the reading?”

“Oh, just read everything.”

And she wasn’t kidding. She wants us to read the entire baby behemoth during summer break. The entire 13 pound, 2500 page, 8 point font beast. Put that on top of precepting and a summer course I’m taking? Farewell, vacation, farewell…..