Weeks 6 & 7 of Semester Two of Nursing School

Midterm Insanity

Ah yes, midterms. I had almost forgotten how nerve-wracking it can be to jump from exam to exam throughout a single day only to sink into more exams the next day. Over and over it goes until you feel throughly rinsed out with the influx of new information that must be flushed out the next day, and scribed onto paper.

I think today was one of the hardest days because I stayed up past 1 am the night before to finish up homework due for this morning at 8 am. Midday was a medication administration exam that I *must* get 100% on in order to be able to give out meds, and late afternoon was a Biology midterm that lasted two hours.

If you can believe it, I almost fell asleep during the Biology midterm. I had already finished writing it, but I was going over the answers when I realized that I was staring off into the unknown about to shut my eyes for a snooze. That would have been awkward if I woke after my head hit the table :)

Last Week's Clinical Experience

I had the opportunity to care for my own client this past week, and it was a really good learning experience. Of course, this is in hindsight. At the actual moment of these learning experiences, I felt incredibly dumb and that I would make a hopeless nurse. I kept asking myself how I managed to miss obvious things, and why I didn't remember to apply principles in real life that I had learned in theory. Temperature's too low? I'm supposed to recheck the temperature first. Moist sounds in the lungs? I'm supposed to check oxygen levels and breathing. Instead, I ran around like a chicken with it's head cut off worrying that something terrible was about to happen.

On top of that, I discovered after two days of spoon-feeding one client that he could feed himself. I thought it was amusing that he let me spoon-feed him without having said anything to the contrary. I mean, it's good practice for me, but it's just odd that he never corrected me (he can talk just fine). When I told my sister, she said that my dad would have done the same thing. My dad loves being pampered and to pretend that he's incapacitated so that someone will baby him. We all laugh about it because *we* can tell when he's faking it, but I bet my dad would get a kick out of a little newbie student nurse not knowing any better. When I exclaimed to the client, "You can eat by yourself!" he spooned some food into his mouth and grinned.

Anyways, I better get some sleep. I have one day off tomorrow to catch up on homework because my teacher is sick, but we'll be back at the hospital the day after. I wonder what new adventure I'll have next? :)

Have a great week!