Did I REALLY sign up for this??

I know I haven't posted in 500 years, but I promise I'm still here....and I'm still in NP school. Thankfully I just finished my HARDEST, most stressful semester of all of my nursing school career. This past semester I took Advanced Patho & Advanced Assessment together. Can we say, BIG mistake?? Why didn't anyone tell me how time consuming and hard these classes were? I mean yes, I realize that we're talking Patho & Assessment here, but still, a little warning would have been nice. The funny thing is, I thought I was making the best choice. I mean it was between taking Patho & Pharm together or Patho & Assessment, so naturally I thought I was making the right choice, I mean wouldn't you think so? Well, guess who was wrong, big time?? Me!! Unfortunately, Pharm was WAY easier than I thought it would be and although assessment wasn't hard persay, it was EXTREMELY time consuming. Between the discussion boards (DBs), the write ups, the quizzes, th...

Christmas is over but I am still basking in the break and the fact that I have no school until January 18th. Sometimes I feel so burnt out, like if I were to just stop going to school tomorrow I would be ok with that...but then I get floated to Med/Surg and I'm like "HELL TO THE NAW!!" I seriously don't understand how floor nurses, especially Med/Surg floor nurses do it. I just couldn't see myself being a floor nurse for 30 years. There is NO way. Not too long ago I read a statistic that said the majority of new nurses were burning out and changing careers within THREE years of becoming nurses. That's crazy! Three years just barely gives you enough time to be wet behind the ears! But I can believe it. In my hospital alone I have seen almost a complete nurse turnover of the whole hospital. That means that every unit in my hospital has had major turnover, and that's not just older nurses, I'm talking even brand new nurses have left within a year of ...

Second semester of graduate school is going along swimmingly. So far no snags. True to what everyone suggested, I am so HAPPY that I chose pharm this semester instead of patho. Everyone in my program that I've talked to has said that patho is a beast, and I just couldn't afford that this semester. Thankfully, I heeded what everyone said and I chose pharm, which has been surprisingly easy. We just recently took our midterm and I only missed three, not too shabby. As I said in my last post, I'm also taking research as well. Another blessing. Everyone said with research it all depended on the teacher, and again, THANKFULLY I got a GREAT teacher! Something else that's different about this semester is the time. Starting my program in the summer I just assumed that every semester would be as jam packed as the summer, but it's not. The regular semesters are nowhere NEAR as packed together as the summer semester. Of course they're trying to jam 4 months into two months ...

Yep, you heard me right, one semester down, and only 6 more to go! So, there were a few changes that I had to make in order to get all of my semesters in line and in making those changes I went from 8 semesters to 7, which means instead of graduating December 2017, I'll now graduate in August of 2017. I know it's just one semester less, but that's 4 months sooner and that makes me excited. So on to how this first semester was. First of all, I took two "easy" classes. I had Nursing Theory and Advanced Roles. While I disliked Theory very much, I felt ok about AR. Also, with summer being an abbreviated semester, it took a minute to get used to so many things being due all at once. Since my school is online there are discussion boards that have to be done every week. Usually there were 2-3 topics due each week where we had to post an initial discussion and then respond to at least 2 of the classmates postings. This was fine. The only real pain was that the postings ...

Summer is here, well I mean not officially, but close enough, and this summer means school is back in full force. Of course by full force I mean part time. In one way I'm looking forward to the fact that I'll only have 2 classes at a time to focus on, which hopefully means I'll make straight A's. On the other hand though, I wish I was able to go full time, like in nursing school, and get it over with! Another 2 1/2 years...sigh. The good thing about this time around though, is how AWESOME clinical is going to be!!! I am soooo looking forward to my clinicals, all dressed up in my white coat and professional name tag! Guess I need to do some shopping before then huh? Going straight from nursing school into nursing, I haven't really had the need to stock up on professional clothing. I went from jeans, sandals and tennis shoes, to scrubs and tennis shoes. And of course there's the ever present bun that I wear, definitely going to need to get my hair did before then!...

I love spring, spring is absolutely my favorite time of the year. To me spring feels like life, it's so full of promise and hope, of newness and freshness! I'm so happy that I'm starting school in June at a time when the daylight is longer and I can take my books outside and study in the fresh air. Speaking of which, I am so close to being able to register for classes. I have updated all of my information and am only waiting on one more hold to be released and then I can register!  It's getting so close, just right around the corner! Can you feel my excitement?!! If not, it looks a little something like this: Although on the same hand I am nervous as all get out! (Yes that's a southern expression.) If you read back through my blog you'll see that I'm definitely a nervous Nelly when it comes to school. I get myself all worked up quite often and although I'm not in a frenzy YET, I am still worried about how I'll do this time around. I mean I've...

I know I have been MIA for quite a while now, I suppose that's what working 4-5 days a week will do to  you, but I'm back and with good news, I WAS ACCEPTED INTO MY MASTER'S FNP PROGRAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  WOOHOOOOOOOOOOOO!!  Can you tell I'm excited?  Doing the happy dance, doing the happy dance. Ok, to be honest, I've known this for a while, but since I don't actually start school until June, I didn't see any point in rushing to put it on here, but since June is just 3 short months away, and registration for classes start April 3, I figured it was time!! Well, that and I'm working in rehab today so I have a little time to kill :D  So, the deets. I am going back to the same school that I graduated from with my BSN. This is a RODP (Regent's Online Degree Program) where they assign you to a home school and lucky me I was assigned back at my alma mater, so thrilled! Like I said, I start in June. I am planning on attending part time, which equals 2 classe...