Hello friends!!!
So, let me begin by saying that I am starting this blog now, at the end of my 3rd week of Nursing School because I have FINALLY found time to do it :) It is strange to say that I am actually IN nursing school seeing as it was a goal of mine to be here for the last 5 or 6 years. Honestly, my first choice was to go to OHSU, but they are SUPER picky about their applicants and after they so politely rejected me I wasn't about to put off school on the chance that they may accept me in the future. Now I am at Linfield-Good Samaritan School of Nursing in NW Portland. It's turning out to be a pretty nice little school. Definitely a huge change from Oregon State, and that's making the transition a bit difficult but I am getting more and more used to it.
The classes are great! Right now I am taking Professional Communications, Foundations of Nursing, Scholarship of Nursing, Nursing Lab/Clinical. Communications is a lot like the Interpersonal Comm. class I took at OSU except it geared towards the Nurse-Patient relationship. Foundations is basically a where we learn all about diseases and procedures that we will encounter as nurses and how to deal with them. Scholarship is all about nursing research and how to used "evidence-based practice" in nursing. And then there's lab, by far my favorite class! This is where we put all of our knowledge to work and do hands on practice. There's a lot of role playing in this class, so it puts my theatre background to good use :P
My weekly schedule is pretty...interesting. I only have one class on Monday, but I have 3 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, including my 6 hour lab, which means 14 hour days on campus for me! Yay! I pretty much have to bring all 3 meals to campus, seeing as I start at 8am and go home at around 9:30pm. My lab is supposed to go until 10pm, but our faculty gets just as tired as we do and so they try to end early. And then I have Wednesdays and Fridays off. Wednesdays usually consist of a lot of homework, while Fridays are usually my lazy days, unless I have a lot to do and no weekend to do it.
Speaking of homework, I have never read more textbook pages IN MY ENTIRE LIFE!!! Even when I was in high school and we were quizzed on the material every week, I usually skimmed, or took notes from my friends. At OSU, for my pre-reqs I almost never did the reading unless I REALLY didn't get something or if it was specifically for an assignment. Now, if I don't do the readings, at least for Foundations and Lab, I get very confused during lecture and sometimes have NO idea what's going on. We have about 200 pages of reading a week, I actually read very few pages, but I go over most of the material just to have a basic understanding before class. The nice thing is that all of my classmates are reading the same materials and so we can all talk about it and help each other out if we get confused. As for assignments, we don't have too many right now. Just some study guides and dosage calculations (math, I know!). So it's not too terrible, but I'll let you know when it gets bad :P
My classmates are really great! There's a pretty large group of us that all have classes together so we all study together in between classes and can all vent about professors, assignments, and life in general :P They're definitely making the transition a bit easier, but I still need to find something to do with my time other than just school. I've always had marching band or theatre to keep me occupied and so now I need to find something like that now to get me out of the house more.
In the next post I'll give you an overview of what we've done over the last few weeks, but for now I'll just leave you with this little introduction. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment :) I'll make sure to make updates as often as I can and I'll make sure to fill you in on all of my adventures in Nursing School, and Beyond!!! (sorry, I had to :P )
Have a fantastic day!!!
~Brit
