This will only be a short blog post today as I have been super busy with non nursing stuff... there may or may not have been copious amounts of alcohol involved but hey I'm on holidays! Unfortunately I'm only on holidays from uni and not from work but you do the best with what you've got. So I enrolled in my classes for semester 1, 2015 today and now I have the unbearable wait before I can start getting into it... Call me crazy but I love the start of semester where you are just figuring out what your classes are about, you buy new books and stationary and everything is clean and fresh and you have the best intentions to study your butt off. Even though you know by mid semester break that resolve has probably weakened, you still go into every new semester with that same drive to succeed.
My classes for next semester include Nursing Caring & Inquiry: Foundational (which if it's anything like Nursing Inquiry is not going to be my favourite subject), Learning for Professional Practice 3 or LFPP3 (which is the exciting class where you get to be hands on and involves 4 weeks of placement!!!) and Intro to Mental Health (which I actually really enjoy the work not so much the class discussions or really the classes where the teacher tries to get us to have discussions and it doesn't always work). So all in all I'll be touching on a bit of everything next semester and praying to God that I can handle 3 subjects and 32 hours of work. I predict a mental breakdown sometime around April 2015 so you've been warned.
The other thing I love about the start of semester is buying new text books. I think most people would think I am insane; text books are expensive and boring! But I am a shopaholic and any sort of purchasing will do; I love looking them up online, seeing how pretty and new they look, getting a great deal on them and then having the package arrive in the post. Yes I am an online shopping addict but hey at least I don't have to feel guilty about buying text books.
Anyways unless you guys write and tell me that you're interested in my non nursing life over the holidays or I think of something interesting to write about I may take a little break until the new year. Who knows? Best way to keep up to date is to sign up for my newsletter (there should be a box over to the right somewhere) and that way you will always know when the latest blog post comes out.
If I don't talk to you all before then have a great Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate) and an amazing New Years! Stay Safe!
This blog post is quite hard for me to type, I almost didn't want to share but what's the point of having a blog if you can't be completely open and honest. On Friday I received my uni results for this semester; one of the classes was an ungraded pass or fail and I passed, the other class 'Alterations in Health' was graded on the normal system (pass, credit, distinction, high distinction). I was expecting to see a distinction not only because I always do well in these types of classes but because I had received a great mark in my mid term exam. When I got the text I checked it with excitement but to my shock I saw a credit. It is only my second credit in my entire time at uni and my first credit was in a class that I really didn't like so I wasn't all that fussed. I was devastated! I texted my mum and nanny to let them know but also to say that I didn't want to talk, it took me a whole day to tell my partner the results.
Today I went in to review my exam and when I got there, there was already a group of girls reviewing there exams. They all seemed quite happy and I overheard one of them say "I am more than happy with that mark". Of course that only served to make me feel worse. Looking at my exam I found where i had gone wrong; in my last exam I did really well but I lost one or two marks here and there for not providing quite enough detail, my tutor explained to me that I might want to try a flow chart to answer these questions and help with the detail. This exam I attempted the flow chart method rather than my usual method of dot points and writing lots and it seems that this failed me. I was not able to make the connections as well as I can when I write. As disappointing as it is it does make me feel better to know that my only failure was not being able to explain myself properly and not that I didn't understand the content.
I have learnt that if you have a system that works for you then you may want to think twice about changing it, particularly in a final exam situation. This is not to discredit the tutor or their methods, this particular tutor is a favourite of mine and his methods are wonderful it was just that this particular method didn't work for me. So I know a lot of my mentors out there will be telling me "Ps get degrees" but for any students out there who are perfectionists like me my advice is to practice new methods before unleashing them in an exam setting and also make sure you don't get bogged down with marks as long as you make sure that you understand the content and can provide safe care then that matters more than marks!
Finally I want to share with everyone a really cute shirt that I designed, perfect for all the nurses out there and they would make a great Christmas present. Check out http://teespring.com/nursemiracleworker1 to take a look. Only 9 days left to order yours so don't miss out!!!
Thanks so much for your time every one and I hope you have a great week!
Ramblings from the life of a student nurse, girlfriend, best friend, daughter, sister, admin manager, marketing assistant, freelance transcriber and crazy person!