25 May 2010

Today it begins in earnest. No more talk. It's real. It's GO time.

Today I attended my first nursing classes, met a few of my cohort and it was a good day over all. This semester I'm taking:

NUR 100: Introduction to Nursing. This is a 1.0 credit hour class that lasts for only five weeks--which means it will be over before I know it! We will only meet for class a total of 3x. We sit in a lecture hall. Today we went over syllabus, learned basics of the nursing curriculum for the next two years) and then went to campus library for a presentation on how to use library resources for the paper we have to write about ethics and nursing (rough draft is due next Tuesday). At first I thought, "Really? A visit to the library? Um, I graduated from highschool and college, I think I know how to use the library".  But afterwards, I was totally grateful for the virtual tour of the online resources that are available to us for research. Helpful for more than just this class...helpful for the coming two years!  Times certainly have changed for library sciences. And a lot of the online library resources will save us money in the long run (so we aren't required to get PDAs with special software). The class is designed to give us an overview of the nursing program. We'll be taking some learning assessment tests (to understand our strengths and weaknesses) which I'm also looking forward to. We'll have online discussion requirements about textbook readings and have to write a short paper about ethics/nursing.

NUR 226: Health Assessment. This is a 2.0 credit hour class that lasts for the full 10 weeks of the summer semester. Our instructor told us that at other schools this is sometimes a 5.0 credit hour class! Oh my. This meets in the nursing lab (beds, dummies, etc) and we sit at round tables for lecture portion. The classroom is freezing...and apparently the temperature is constant at 66 degrees. So I'll be packing my fleece jacket all summer. LOL. Today we reviewed the syllabi and due dates for assignments. We asked a few questions and then were dismissed early. She's cancelled class on Thursday, so we have a load of stuff to due for next Tuesday. This class is going to be fun because we are learning something new and applying it each week, every week building on skills. By the end of the semester we'll be able to take a history and do a physical assessment and do write-ups! I must say that I am very grateful to have been a standardized patient/mock patient for first year medical students at UVA and get to observe (as the patient) this assessement. I learned so much about it from the patient side of things (and being asked to give feedback)...and now I can incorporate the patient and nurse side of things. I'm really looking forward to this class.

I'll be taking a Dosage Calc class (1.0 credit hour) for the 2nd five weeks of the summer semester (after NUR 100 is finished). Not required, but recommended if math skills are rusty.

Now I'm going to go watch a Neflix movie and relax. Never fear, on June 6th I'll be putting my Netflix subscription "on vacation" for the semester. There's always Redbox.com and Hulu.com for when I need some diversions...but Netflix is too expensive if I'm not going to use it.