Second Semester - Week One

This week was our first week of school, and even though we started on Tuesday instead of Monday I feel like it counted for a whole week. This semester I'm taking both Nursing 102 and microbiology, so it's going to be a bit busier than last semester.

The first day of school was a clinical day, but we weren't in the hospital yet. We were on campus and had 6 hours of lecture/administrative work, as well as a nursing critical-thinking exam. That was a bit confusing, I think, because we were told ahead of time that we'd have this exam but not why, or if it counted towards our grade, or what it was all about. It turned out it was a metric for the school, not for our grades, so after that I didn't really worry about it. Which served me well, since I got a 920/1000. I have no idea what a good score is but that sounds high so I'll take it.

I have a different instructor for my nursing class this semester, so I am also getting to know her style as well as a whole new set of classmates - only one of my classmates from the first semester is in my class, and he won't be in my clinical group. As always it's interesting to get to know a whole new group of personalities and see where we mesh and where we divide.

We had our first skill lab, too, and started learning to give injections! They are not starting us slowly, that's for sure. We managed to cover intramuscular and intradermal injections but didn't have time to cover subcutaneous, so we will cover that next week. We had real needles and dummy body parts on which to practice. It was quite exciting. Here's a picture from skill lab:



My microbiology class is proving interesting already - we've already had a lab and been assigned our microscopes to use throughout the semester. Mine seems good, which is a relief, and I like that we'll keep the same one so we get to know the instrument. Everyone told me that this professor really teaches you to use a microscope properly, so I'm hoping that in this class I'll finally learn how to not get headaches when I look through one for more than half an hour. I really enjoy microscopy and the nerdier aspects of science, so getting my brain on board with that would be nice. Plus, microbiology really is interesting, as a topic.


On the whole, while I'm anxious about the amount of time I'll need to study this semester, and the workload, I'm still excited and ready to go.