The Sanborns » Nursing School

I’m not with my family anymore

Becca — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 02:51:13 +0000

I told Trina that I would put up a blog entry up about our car situation, and I will, but there is so much more to deal with that I think I will wait a few more days.

In other news, I am sick and have been sick since school started. We’re pretty sure it’s allergy caused because we visited Memphis last week and well, Memphis is the cause of a lot of allergy problems.

School has been going ok so far, I feel sad that I am not with my ~~class~~family anymore, but I’ll manage. I mean, I didn’t know anyone last semester either, but I think it’s harder to get to know others when you don’t have many classes with them. My friends from my class I’ve known for over a year now, we all had Microbiology together before entering the program and with some of them, I had A&P or Statistics together. So that’s been a hard adjustment, but I’m hanging on tight.

I also made the transition to a smart phone this past week and it’s so strange to constantly be connected to the internet. It drove me crazy yesterday while driving to hear dings coming from my phone, but I was a good girl and did not check the phone unless I was completely stopped. Apparently all the changes we’ve made to our account recently enabled Gray to get an early upgrade, which he researched and found the best deal on and we ordered his phone last night, the new Samsung Captivate. My phone is the iPhone 4, if you were wondering.

We’re not completely sure if the gluten-free diet helped me but I am going to try and stick with it as much as possible because it keeps me eating healthy foods which is important now that school has started. We tried gluten-free tuna cakes last night and were surprised when they turned out quite good, at least in my opinion… and I’m the picky eater.

We have some plans for this weekend, although they will probably change around a lot. We’re going out of town Monday and I’m excited about that, more details will come next week… until then, I leave you with this video I took the other night.

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First semester redo

Becca — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:06:09 +0000

I am currently at work, watching the minutes tick by slowly on my first day back at school. I’m calling it the first semester redo because although I passed the majority of my classes last semester, I’m still considered a first semester nursing student because of Pathophysiology.

So as I sit here, I am enjoying the first day so far, probably because of the freshmen. Most of us have been there, a timid, shy, and probably scared 18 year old (although some are older) who just left the comforts of high school.

I definitely remember my first semester away at college. I’m pretty sure I called my mom daily and oh yeah, I was a mess, but weren’t we all? The first year of college was life changing. I started out as a music major and then after that first year I knew it wasn’t for me. I love singing, but somehow singing for a career made it less fun and enjoyable. So I changed my major to Journalism and I now have a degree in Journalism, that I don’t use. Oh well.

Anyways, today I am sort of sad because I’m not with my friends as they journey into the world of Pharmacology, Research, and Intro to Nursing clinicals. Instead I will be learning about End of Life Care, Pathophysiology, Nursing in the Media, and Nutrition. All important, but not moving much down the path which I thought I would be headed. I hope that hard work will pay off and at the end of the semester I will be a second semester nursing student with clinicals next semester. I think the most frustrating part is knowing how well I did in everything else, but yet a 74.2 is going to hold me back. Ugh. Oh well.

So here is to another semester, hopefully this one will fly by and then it will be Christmas and before I know it, clinicals.

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Post tags: first semester nursing school, Nursing School

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Gluten free and the end of the summer

Becca — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:00:51 +0000

I went gluten-free two weeks ago. I wanted to know if gluten was the cause of my stomach problems so going gluten-free was the way to find out that didn’t mean a doctor visit and shelling out lots of money.

This weekend I will be eating gluten to see if it makes me feel sick and if it does, I will go back to gluten-free and if it doesn’t, I may be forced to eliminate dairy from my diet and see if that helps.

This week we are in Memphis to visit with family before going back to school next week. Monday we stayed with my parents and (briefly) saw my brother and his family. Tuesday we drove to Memphis and we will be here until Saturday. I haven’t been online much except to check my e-mail on my iPod so if you have noticed my disappearance, that is why. I haven’t slacked on my workouts either, I’ve been keeping with my schedule for the half marathon so that makes me happy. Saturday morning I am set to do 6 miles so we’ll see how it goes and if I’m dead for the ride back to the ‘boro.

I think this week is going by way too fast and it disappoints me that I am not enjoying it more seeing as how it’s my last week of freedom until, basically, December. I’m excited and nervous for the new semester, but mainly excited because I feel like I will finally be on my path to becoming a nurse again. I am not looking forward to burying myself in the books again, but hopefully this time around will be a tad easier and my schedule is a less busy so I’ll have more of a balance between studying and fun time. It will probably also help that we got rid of my biggest distraction: television. Ahem.

So, here is to a new chapter of our lives: Gray’s senior senior senior year and more nursing school.

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When it rains it pours

Becca — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 20:11:19 +0000

Because that’s just how life seems sometimes.

Basically, we made it to August before having to spend money from savings. Over a week ago we had to fork over a lot of money for health insurance because ours expired at the very end of July. That wasn’t too horrible, but I knew in the back of my mind that this left us very little in our savings and usually that’s just an open door for more money troubles to come our way.

Ahem.

So Saturday morning, the morning of Teresa’s wedding, we are driving to run some errands… We are almost to Wal-mart and the truck starts acting stupid. We end up making it back to campus, where I was going to run, and Gray proceeds to call my brother and his dad. Thirty minutes later I’m halfway through my 4 mile run but decide to quit and we make it home. See, we were supposed to go to Teresa’s wedding Saturday afternoon and we had to make arrangements for Trina to come get us instead of meeting at her apartment. Stupid truck.

On the way to the wedding, Gray is talking to my brother and they work out a deal on a car my brother has. For only $300 he will fix it up for us and get it running. There goes our savings. The next day we wired the money to him and got a friend to take us to Wal-mart where we bought a bike for me.

Monday morning we leave the house at 5:30 on said bikes and ride all the way to campus. I complained the first few minutes about the bike seat and the fact that I was sweating… AT 5:30 IN THE MORNING. When we got to school, I mapped the route out on dailymile.com and yes… 2 miles and some change… crazy. I can see how it’s a good workout and better for us, but it’s just so humid and hot outside that it’s torture!

We rode our bikes to work for the entire week and I must say, it ended up being alright. I did trade with Gray and used his bike until Thursday when we got me a new bike seat. However, that was rather rough and we ended up returning my bike and got another one, similar to what Gray already had. I rode it on Friday and was well pleased, haha.

We do have the car and it works, but has the “check engine” light on… and that is a whole spew of problems in itself. We’re taking it in tomorrow to be looked at because the tags expire in September and apparently the car will automatically fail the emissions test if the light is on, regardless of whether or not it’s an actual emissions problem… great, I know. The car itself is not worth putting a lot of work into it so I imagine that if it’s too much money we might just sell it back to my brother because he can use it back home without passing an emissions test. ugh I hate grown up problems.

We’re actually starting to shop around for another car because that was what the plan was for this fall, get me a car so that I can drive to clinicals in the spring.

So yeah, a lot is going on and to top it all off I have a dentist appointment on Tuesday that I might have to cancel. My eye twitch has returned, I’m pretty sure it is stress related and so I need to work on getting rid of all this stress in a better way.

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Winding down the summer

Becca — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 11:46:32 +0000

A new post is coming soon concerning the vehicle, but right now I just don’t want to mess with rambling about the situation.

Today is our last day of work/school for the summer, although Gray will be doing some work for the next two weeks while I sit at home and catch up on television. Ahem.

I can’t believe that the summer is almost over and in two weeks I will be back in school full-time. I am sort of glad that I won’t be able to do an externship next summer because I think I will want a final summer to relax and enjoy life before the real world comes. Of course that might include a job, but I don’t think I’ll mind. In some ways I’m not ready for school to start back and others I think it will be just fine.

Some big changes are on the horizon, just hope I can handle them without freaking out too much.

© Becca for The Sanborns, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Nursing School, real world job, school, work

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The end of the semester

Becca — Wed, 12 May 2010 01:02:23 +0000

The end of the semester came and is gone and I am now on summer vacation. However, I need to back up and share the last week of finals.

I shared about the flood, but I don’t remember if I shared my two options. Because of the flooding and the fact that many students are commuters, MTSU decided to cancel finals Monday and moved them to Friday of the same week. My professor, however, gave us the option of doing our final on Friday OR on Tuesday with the other Patho class. Once I knew that information, I spent Monday in the library for four straight hours studying with a few friends from nursing school. Essentially, I decided to do my final on Tuesday because I didn’t think any extra days of studying would help me out. Once I made the decision I found out that because finals were now on Friday as well, I had to work my normal schedule at work. I realized that finding someone to cover my hours would be difficult, so I opted to just stick with my decision.

Tuesday morning I took my final and was informed it would be several days before my grade would be posted. SEVERAL DAYS OF AGONY.

Well, I had another final Wednesday morning so I had to get to work studying for that final and we all know I hadn’t studied for it at all. I looked through my notes twice, once Tuesday night and once Wednesday morning. That’s all. Folks, that final was pretty easy…. I ended up making a B on the final and hopefully a B in the class (not verified at the time of publishing). Thank goodness for that!

Well, that day at lunchtime, I met up with Maggie and Hilary at Camino Real and had a margarita. I had earned the drink and just needed to relax some. Days went by and then Friday afternoon Hilary texted me, letting me know final exam grades were posted. I freaked out, called Gray in, and we opened up to D2l, only to be faced with my grade. I made a 81 on the final, I need a 84 to pass the class. You can imagine the thoughts that went through my mind for the next few hours.

I texted my fate to Hilary who suggested I email the professor and see if I had a chance. So I did, I e-mailed her and asked if she could find my points. My total grade was a 74.2 and I needed a 75 to pass the class. 2 points people, TWO POINTS. Saturday morning the professor e-mailed me back and essentially said no. I understand her reasoning, but at the same time I’m like, TWO POINTS.

The funny thing is right before I got her e-mail on Saturday I prayed and told God that I was ok with not passing if he provided the money and opportunity to take the class again in the fall. See, this second degree is funded by loan money and if you are a second degree student, they watch you like a hawk. I understand, they don’t want any more octomoms living off the system, it just makes my life very frustrating.

So once I knew my grade, I e-mailed my advisor and the lady in the loan department that I needed to talk to. My advisor taught the class that I mentioned previously, where the final was on Wednesday. She is a sweet woman and reminds me of my mom… I love having her as my advisor! Anyway, she knew about my situation because I was going to try and take Patho over the summer, but long story short, I can’t.

So yeah, I ended up getting an e-mail from the loan lady Monday morning which was very confusing. She would grant me loan money to take Patho and another elective class, and I thought that meant only six hours. She called me back (after a long-winded phone message from me) later Monday afternoon and explained that it didn’t limit my loan money, just that I had to have six hours of required classes from my degree.

In other words, I can be full-time in the fall, keep my campus job, and I will take a few extra classes that are not required, but helpful to fulfill the full-time status. Right now those are looking to be Patho, a nursing elective, Nutrition, and either another nursing elective or Abnormal Psych.

That’s all for now, more on the anniversary and other stuff later.

ETA: I should say that the loan lady was actually VERY nice and helpful and was sorry I had hit this “road block.”

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Tomorrow

Becca — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 00:37:30 +0000

Tomorrow is my first final and kind of a big deal because although I’m passing the class, the final could easily cause me to have a D and end up failing anyways. Don’t you just love nursing school’s grading system? Basically an A is 90-100 a B is 82-90 and a C is 75-81… so yeah, I have a high C, but can only miss 36 or so questions and maintain that C. RIDICULOUS. Before anyone tries to tell me they know I’ll do great, please don’t. It will just make me feel like crap if I don’t do great. All I can do at this point is study my butt of and hope the tests aren’t horrible.

I am so glad that in a week I will be done with school, but I am also kind of terrified because so much depends on me doing well in these classes… and well, I want to do well because failing out of nursing school or falling behind a semester would really suck and I wouldn’t know what to do with myself because my job is attached to me being in school full-time. There is also the fact that I really feel like nursing is where I should be so to fail out would make me feel really misguided.

Anyways, other than school the other fun thing this work was that I auditioned for Glee, just for fun. It really awoken my love for theatre and who knows, maybe I’ll get brave and audition for a community theater or something. Really, the best thing would for me to try out for singing with worship at church, but I’m also terrified or being told I suck. I mean, I made it into the school of music at MTSU so I must not suck too much, but it’s just terrifying to get back into something when you’ve been out of it for a while.

So that is what is currently going on with me, what is going on in your lives? GIve me an update in the comments.

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On the weekend…

Becca — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 21:10:10 +0000

I spent my weekend studying and I sure hope it paid off.

We also dog sat this weekend for a couple from our community group in church. The dogs were awesome and not a problem at all. In fact, it solidified my love for dogs and I really want to get one, of course I want a yorkie. We saw two different neighbors, both with yorkies and I fell more in love with the breed. I’ve been wanting one for well over two years now and though I have been busy with school, I still think a little puppy would brighten up my days.

I finished my last test of the semester, with only 4 finals keeping me from summer vacation.

~~Health Assessment Final lab~~
Health Assessment Lecture Final
Pathophysiology Final
Health and Gerontology Final

Wowzers.

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On me right now…

Becca — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 11:34:49 +0000

I’m gearing up for a pretty rough next few weeks… tests, papers, finals and then summer. It’s seems impossible that I can make it through the semester without my head exploding because my three finals are Comprehensive, meaning I started studying last week for Patho. It’s kind of ridiculous how much information I have to know.

There are a lot of changes that are spurring around me and well, I’m not a fan of change. It takes time for me to adjust to said change and in the end I’m usually alright.

I wish people realized the amount of pressure I put on myself. I’m in nursing school, one of the hardest schools to get in and I’m struggling to stay alive, as are all nursing students. It’s a day to day progress and there are both good and bad days. Last week was a pretty good week overall, and hopefully it can only get better. Hopefully. I’m tired of people assuming I’m going to do great and then when I do badly, they don’t want to step on my toes… just keep encouraging me, because I need something to help me stay afloat.

I was watching the Wizard of Waverly Place yesterday while I studied and I realized that I want the perfect little bubble world we always see on Television, even though I know it doesn’t exist. Really though, it shows me that some previous thoughts on religion are becoming truer every day. Each day that I wake up and realize that I am not liking how things are, I am that much closer to wishing the rapture would occur, and that was always something I selfishly didn’t want to happen. I guess God is using this “change” I don’t like to get the bad spots out of me. It’s working.

I can’t wait for the next 16 days to fly by.. or two weeks and two days… freedom sounds really good right now.

FYI, I know some of you read this are going to assume you know what I’m referring to, please don’t. There is a lot I don’t share on this blog, simply because I’m a chicken and don’t like how people are going to react. I tend to internalize a lot that I deal with and dwell on ridiculous things that are out of my control, seriously. Let’s just say that I try to appear stronger than I really am, and right now I’m very weak in certain areas of my life. It’s something I struggle with constantly. I don’t have it all together and I don’t like pretending I do. Maybe someday I will do a post on my insecurities, ha!

- ~~1 H/G test left this week~~
- ~~1 presentation(Spirituality) this week~~
- ~~1 HA test next week~~
- ~~1 paper next week (H/G)~~
- ~~1 standardized test next week (HESI)~~
- last Patho test the NEXT week.
- Health Assessment final the day after the Patho test
- ~~Spirituality final essay due Wed.~~
- two days later on Friday is my Health Assessment Final
- the following Monday is my Patho final
- and the last day on Wednesday is my Health and Gerontology final

© Becca for The Sanborns, 2010. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: change, new beginnings, thoughts, transitions

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Finals finals finals….

Becca — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 11:21:03 +0000

I have another post coming soon that will probably be password protected (same as last time) because of the nature of what I am writing about, but I thought it was time for a post that everyone could read.

I am 22 days away from school being over with for the summer and lets just give you an idea of what I am up against:
- 1 H/G test left this week
- 1 presentation(Spirituality) this week
- 1 HA test next week
- 1 paper next week (H/G)
- 1 standardized test next week (HESI)
- last Patho test the NEXT week.
- Health Assessment final the day after the Patho test
- Spirituality final essay due Wed.
- two days later on Friday is my Health Assessment Final
- the following Monday is my Patho final
- and the last day on Wednesday is my Health and Gerontology final

3 tests, a presentation, two papers (one being a final essay), 3 finals, and a standardized test… all in 22 days.

All my friends that wonder why I said no social life till May, THIS IS WHY.

© Becca for The Sanborns, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: finals, Nursing School, projects, tests

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The Sanborns » Nursing School

I’m not with my family anymore

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