So my first semester of nursing school is in the bag; we had our final last Wednesday, and the next semester starts promptly tomorrow… not much time for a break, eh? Oh well, that’s what accelerated means! Either way, I am proud to have made it through the first semester intact, but my stress hasn’t dissipated.
It’s weird, because looking back on my grades from the past semester, a big part of my stress comes from the fact that this truly is something that you can’t study your way out of. In most every class I’ve ever taken, if you study harder, you do better, but in nursing school, it seems like sometimes, that doesn’t even matter. Sometimes you (at least feel like you) know the concepts like the back of your hand, and tricky questions throw you off, and instead of acing the test, you sit there staring at a B, wondering what went wrong. Funny thing is, that the ones you missed are often times the questions that you would often have answered the exact same way again; even though you know the correct answer isn’t the one you chose. I have been working on learning how to beat these tricky questions, and I haven’t figured out a fool proof method yet. From what I have heard from pretty much all my nursing friends, is that this is a hallmark of nursing school, and while it is difficult to grasp, eventually, I will be able to master them. Here’s hoping that’s true, because it’s more than frustrating at times.
I just hope that I can keep doing what I am doing, and keep doing well, because being a nurse means a lot to me, and the more I go through this process, it seems to matter more and more with each day. Here’s to repeat success in this rapid summer semester, and continued success in each subsequent semester that follows!