Friday, February 27, 2009

To arr is pirate

I think I am starting to get acquainted with nursing school right after the Health Fair experience. My procrastination has lessened and I am proud to say that I'm nearly done with the first page of my 3-page study guide. Of course, I would stay awake until I can to finish all three just so I can move on to the next subject tomorrow (or later, considering it's already 12:21am). So far, I have learned that pulling is easier than pushing, and that catheters are very helpful, but are very painful to look at. I was studying perineal care a while ago, and the sight of the urinary catheter in Sim Man's penis popped into my mind and gave me the creeps.

I will be taking the CAAP (Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency) on the 20th of March, which also coincides with our 2nd clinical, where we have to go to a day care and do a Denver II test on the children. I'm a little anxious about that exam, because it will test what I have learned in college so far. While my grades are acceptable, I don't think I remember much of what I have truly learned. I'm particularly nervous about the math and science reasoning parts. I have only seen math in my algebra and chemistry classes, that a simple question about the area of a trapezoid would easily put me off-guard. I just hope CAAP would be just like the COMPASS placement exam, or the TOEFL, but since this is a college-level exam, I expect that this would be a lot harder.

I STILL have no topic on the IPR for our Professional Communication class. Some of my classmates have told us that some of the higher-level students just went on and wrote stuff without doing an actual interview. That would be easier, of course, but that would be cheating, and I can NEVER cheat again. Besides, with college, cheating will not get me anywhere, especially in this field.

I feel a lot better when I achieve something because of my own efforts. In my younger years, I cheated in quizzes and even had the guts to cheat on one of my exams. SHAME ON ME. I got Cs on those subjects, and I think I could have done better than that--WITHOUT CHEATING. I have trashed my concerns about academics the moment I got into high school because most of my classmates graduated with honors and I have convinced myself that I can never measure up to them. If in elementary, the thought of not being included in the top 10 scared the living shenaniganz out of me, in high school, not even the sight of a 75 in a report card startled me. The same thing happened in my first year at SLU. The prospect of independence diverted my attention from the more important stuff, and I spent a whole year in there without learning anything (in academics, I mean.. I learned a lot about socializing, I suppose) and not caring that I haven't been learning. Being included in the "best" block there is in the college did not exactly help me (no offense guys, you are still the best blockmates I've had) because being with the brightest students is high school all over again. Having consistently low grades paired with zero motivation from most of our instructors convinced me that that's all I can ever be--a mediocre.

Now, I am struggling to prove this wrong.

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I felt so sad when I learned that Jean Webster, the author of Daddy-Long-Legs, died after she gave birth to her daughter--only a year after she got married.

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I'm still perturbed about the incident of the forgotten nametag during the Health Fair.