Week 1: I Survived the First Week of Nursing School!

It's only week 1, but I'm thinking nursing school is going to be a game of survival. The first day of class, everyone brought their laptops to school and I noticed that most people had normal desktop backgrounds. You know, pictures of their family, kids, etc. By the time we had clinical/lab yesterday (it was technically clinical but we were going over information about clinical and weren't actually at the hospital), almost everyone had this desktop background (me included):

Yes, the amount of information they throw at us the first week is extremely overwhelming and then they start talking about how if you don't have a 70% average in any part of the course, you'll be dropped; and if you don't get your skills checked off, you'll be dropped; and if you don't stand on your toes and hold your mouth just right, you'll be dropped. (Ok, so maybe I made that last part up...) Statistically, over half the class will be dropped. Yah, I know, very encouraging.

Right now, I'm freaking out over getting my CNA skills checked off. In order for us to go to clinicals, we have to get checked off on our CNA skills and it's just like the CNA skills exam. I'm rather scared because I haven't done any CNA skills since I passed the CNA test last May... However, the instructor keeps saying that she can tell if we're confident or not. Does that mean if we're confident and look like we know what we're doing and get most of the steps done properly, that we'll pass? I definitely hope so!

Also, the volume and speed of information we're studying is pretty expansive...They sent us homework to do before the last day of class. It was about caring and was pretty straight-forward and interesting. Then on Monday, they gave us calendars with the whole semester laid out. Oh boy! Every Monday, we have two new topics that we need to be read-up on and every Wednesday we have yet another topic to be familiar with. However, the information is VERY interesting (who knew that you can have a disease but not an illness, illness without a disease, wellness even with illness, and there is no agreed-upon definition for "wellness"?!).

Anyway, I've been studying like crazy, making sure I study at least four hours a day, preferably more. And, like I mentioned earlier, the information is very interesting. Several times, I've felt discouraged at how few nursing students actually graduate from this program (classes start with 50 students and usually graduate with about 15...) and so have been looking up encouragement for nursing students. I've found several very encouraging articles and inspirational images/memes. I'll share the images below (they're also on my desktop background, in case anyone was interested).

...Until next week!

(Note: I do not own any of these images!)