Well here we are team. The end of the last semester and boy oh boy was it a journey.

My class was supposed to graduate over the summer but pandemic pushed it back so we had the summer off. Even though I was pretty bummed to be delayed it was weirdly nice to have some time off. Get a taste of what it’s going to be like when I’m not juggling multiple jobs or school and work.

Then it was time to come back, thinking the summer refreshed me. I texted up my study group ready to burn through one last semester.

Spoiler alert: that upbeat attitude lasted 2 minutes before the group texts started to turn into “awwww fuck.”

The Online Transition

The end of last semester we had to start doing our lectures online and it was okay because it was only 4 weeks but now we had to do our whole semester this way.

The first thing I learned is you can speed up the lectures to save some time

My instructor had a tendency to talk with her hands a lot and I noticed girlfriend was keeping her nail game strong

I had some hard senioritis and got really good at figuring how to lay down during every zoom session.

Clinical time: First up was psych.

Somewhere collecting debt and dust in my parents basement is a degree in psychology so I thought I’d be good at this. Not so much, it was a lot of me wearing a full face shield finding someone approachable and awkwardly asking how suicidal they felt within the first 100 seconds of meeting them.

Next up was critical care

Well I felt like a renal failure most of the class. It was super hard.

Lastly was leadership.

Leadership in nursing school is when you pick a focus (surgery, pediatrics, OB, ICU, oncology). You rank your choices and they put you there without your class. You get assigned a preceptor (like a trainer) and you complete 80 hours with them. The idea is like it’s an internship where you get to practice your skills, get a feel for what your job will be like, and trial out your interest.

I got placed in my 5th choice. Psychiatric nursing at Pine Rest. I wasn’t thrilled initially. We had just done our psych class and I also previously have worked at Pine Rest and like I’ve said previously I had studied psychology. I didn’t feel like I had a lot to learn in this environment.

In my mind I was going to be like Nurse Ratchet

Just sitting behind a desk passing pills and judgment.

In reality I was running my ass off

These patients are going through crises and a lot of times they just need to talk. I spent a lot of my time offering to help, sitting with people, identifying triggers. And also calling the kitchen a lot because that was a hot mess everyday.

Precepting

Nurses volunteer to precepte students so you know they don’t hate the job. My preceptor was named Inez and she is a clinical instructor and a DNP student (doctorate of nursing) so I assumed she was going to be a hard ass. Inez was tough and smart and a wonderful mentor.

Pinning Ceremony

Traditionally nurses do a pinning ceremony which is like a graduation. Obviously with covid it was a lot harder to pull off. We settled on doing a virtual ceremony. Since I was on the committee I had my hand in helping set it up.

The end

It felt a little anticlimactic because at the end you are just doing leadership by yourself so you don’t even see your class. I felt sad to not see everybody. I kept in touch with my study group. A group of lovely young ladies that I’ve been in school with since the beginning. It’s been to support each other as we interview for jobs, ask questions we are too afraid to ask current nurses, and freak out about boards.

The anxiety of it all

I spend a lot of time thinking “Wait, that’s the end? I don’t know enough”. I mostly am like how I am educated and prepared to take care of someone? Also it’s a pandemic which I look forward to rubbing in baby nurses face down the line. Basically going to be our generations version of walking 15 miles in the snow both ways.

I can’t believe it’s over. I’m very grateful to my classmates, friends, instructors, family for being there for me on this journey!