This school year I started my junior year at the University of Texas and I started nursing school!!!  It has been such an exciting time.  It was a long journey getting here, but I finally made it.  And I love it so much.  I know it was will be a lot of hard work and difficult times, but I’m finally doing what I want to do.

I used to love school so much when I was in high school.  I’ve always loved learning, but ever since college my love for learning has dwindled a bit.  The classes I was taking the past 1 ½ years were alright, but sometimes I just hated studying.  Like really?  Microbiology?  What’s the point of that?  Yes, yes of course biology is an important part of nursing, but some of the details of that class and other classes it’s hard to see how I will actually use it in nursing.  And so I am ecstatic to finally be taking nursing classes!  I am actually enjoying school, enjoying learning, and even enjoying studying again.  Yes, I know I am a nerd.  Let’s just establish that now.

Being in these nursing classes and studying for these nursing classes is so much fun.  We are learning nursing skills that I will be using the rest of my career and it is so cool.  Yes, of course sometimes studying sucks and a lot more than sometimes they give us so much homework, but when studying for these classes I actually enjoy what I’m learning.  It’s a totally different feeling than microbiology last year or chemistry freshman year where I dreaded pulling out those textbooks.

Anyways, you get the point.  This is my first semester of a 5 semester long nursing program to get my Bachelors of Science in Nursing.  So once I graduate and pass the NCLEX (certification exam) I will be a registered nurse!  This semester, we don’t start our clinical rotations yet and are only in simulation lab at the nursing school.  I really appreciate and like the way our program is set up in the way that we get to learn some nursing skills and practice in a simulation lab setting for an entire semester without the pressure of being in the hospital and practicing on real people.

This semester, the classes I’m taking are Health Assessment Skills, Clinical Assessment Skills, Intro to Patient Centered Care, Ethics of Healthcare, Physiology + lab, & a health peer educator class (16 hours technically, but the peer educator class isn’t a lot of work so it’s more like 13 hours).  The first 3 are nursing specific classes and the other 3 are general healthcare classes with pre-med, pre-pharm, pre-PT, etc.  I really like both of my skills classes because it’s a combination of lecture/demonstration of skills + going to the skills lab and actually practicing the skills.  I’m a big visual and hands-on learner and having the opportunity to learn in this way is really helpful.

Another cool thing about these skills classes is that we have some video exams instead of only written exams.  These exams will be us actually performing a skill and we will be graded on how well we execute the skill.  It’s a nice change up from all the written exams and the studying where I read the textbook, memorize a bunch of stuff, and spit it up for the test.  I like that with these skills exams, I know exactly what I need to do to get an A and I can practice for as much time as I need to get it right before the exam.  I’m excited for the next 2 ½ years to see what’s in store.

So that’s me right now.  I just wanted to give a brief update about nursing school because I know a lot of you are curious on how it’s going!  Stay tuned for hopefully another update later on this semester.  Hook em horns!

XOXO
Texan On The Go