Nursing School is Over!

Well, nursing school is over.  Kind of.  I am done with all of my classes, I have turned in all of my assignments and now I just have to take finals.  Then boards.  I don't care much about boards, I will pass them, I just need to put in the time to study.  My finals are currently occupying all of my time and attention now.  I have 6 of them.  I have 4 of them this week and 2 the next week.  I started studying for them about 6 days ago.  I go to the library every day for a few hours to study.  I can't get anything done if I stay home, I would just stop and play with my cute daughter every 5 minutes if I tried staying home.  I'm doing my wife a favor by leaving too, so she doesn't have to keep the house quiet while I'm home studying.  

When I started nursing school 2 1/2 years ago, I was in a state of shock for some time.  I couldn't believe the amount of quizzes we had to take, the amount of reading we had to do, the amount of big papers I would have to write, the amount of big projects that I would have to do, the amount of clinical hours I would have to spend in the hospital, and how hard the tests could be.  It was quite apparent to me that my life was about to change significantly.  After my first semester, I guess that state of shock just became my new normal, everyday life. 

Nursing school kind of feels like you are doing 2 majors at once.  You spend A LOT of time in lecture taking vigilant notes and a lot of time in the nursing lab.  On top of that, you spend a countless amount of hours in the hospital working as a student nurse (not getting paid of course).  On top of all that, you spend more hours at home studying than I even want to talk about.

If you are going for your Bachelor of Science in Nursing like I did, you get the whole grand slam of nursing courses.  Going for your bachelor is the best choice, you don't get paid any more, but you are much more educated and you open up your chances of working in management or grad school should you desire.  

You probably didn't know this, but most nurses are only Associate degree nurses.  Only 30% of nurses have their bachelor in nursing.  The American nurses association has a goal to have 80% of nurses with their bachelor degree sometime in the future.  

Here are some funny things I found online about nursing school, there is some truth to all of them:

A few weeks ago, my wife and I took a trip with some friends to southern Utah to stay in a cabin in Zions National Park.  It was a nice quick little get-a-way from nursing school and we had a great time. Here are a couple of pictures taken at Zions:

We took a trip into nearby Springdale to get some groceries, and on our way back, we were escorted off the road by a police officer to make way for the oncoming Springdale parade.  It was quite the interesting parade.  We were very entertained for the entire hour.  My favorite part of the parade was this hippie guy driving his beautiful John Deere tractor:

Accept This Truth, It Will Never Be The Same...

Last semester, I went over to the University of Utah with several of my fellow nursing students to attend a lecture on the topic of grieving.  It was very fascinating to me, and I learned a lot.  I wanted to share some of what I learned with you.  Maybe you are currently grieving, maybe you have grieved in the past, but certainly at some time in your life you will find yourself grieving and I hope something here will help you cope with your grief.

"Accept this truth, it will never be the same."

You need to lower your expectations and try to find peace in your grief journey.

Grief is sadness on steroids, it is a bunch of messy emotions.

Very important:  There is NO WRONG WAY to grieve.

No loss is more or less painful from another, it is just different.

To loose a parent is to loose the past...
To loose a child is to loose the future...
To loose a spouse is to loose the present...

You should not make any important decisions while you are grieving, you will have what many people describe as "brain fog," and you just need to get up in the morning and put one foot in front of the other.

To give yourself a gift does not feed self-pity, it prevents it...and is a wonderful thing to do.

To be in denial is not unhealthy, as long as you consciously make the decision to be in denial.

Do not try to triumph over grief, just survive it, because that is just as honorable.

Grief will eventually go away, but the emptiness and yearning for those we love does not ever go away, nor should it.