MrNoSpace's Reiver Capades

Nursing School Weeks 1-4

mrnospace — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 04:19:58 +0000

We have manikins just like this in our lab that we practice on and do skills check offs on, but we don’t have to wear our uniforms.

Well hello again,

I am officially in nursing school now. Have been for 4 weeks now. I knew it would be hard, but I am still surprised at how much of a time commitment it is. I heard everyone say it, but it is true. Reading 2-4 chapters every night with workbook assignments, daily quizzes and weekly unit tests. At least one test sometimes up to 3 in one week. Skills assessment every week and weekly posts and journals, and various misc. assignments. I have had many 12 credit hour semesters before, but I have never had to work so hard at it. There is a steep grading scale too. 77 is failing 78-86 is a C 87-92 is a B 93-100 is a A. It is a good idea to set a high standard for health professionals.

My class is full. We fill every seat. This is the first time they had two sections for first year students. That is lucky for me because otherwise I would be on a waiting list. There is a morning section and an afternoon section. I have classes every day from about 1-5:30 (some days I come in early to work in the lab), and then every other minute of my day is spent getting ready for class. Probably one of the most challenging aspects to studying is that everything is in medical language. So you have to learn the lingo along with learning new concepts and procedures. And then everything has an abbreviation that you need to know. The first couple of weeks I was very overwhelmed with everything that needed to be done, but now I feel like I am getting the hang of it.

I wanted to write my blog sooner. Heck, I wanted to do a lot of things that I just haven’t had time for. I will try to keep you posted, but as of now I am passing my classes. I just took a test today on Elimination and I haven’t seen the damages yet. Well, i need to put it behind me now and study for the next test, on Monday. We get two days off next week! Yay, for faculty work days! Triple word score, I found out that we get to have spring break too! It will be in the middle of clinicals, but that is OK a break is a break.

Final

mrnospace — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 21:54:06 +0000

Well this semester is over. I have taken the last microbiology test (hopefully of my life). It was a good year, and now I have the nursing program before me. I have a lot to be excited about this holiday season. Finishing a class is always a little bittersweet for me. I just start to make connections with classmates and professors and then it’s, “so long, fare well.” Many of them I never see again, but there is that occasional familiar encounter on campus with its acknowledging nods and kind words in passing. I like those fleeting moments. They’re comforting. It is how we develop fond attachments to a place. It is the way of a building embracing an old friend in a hug. Okay that is enough nostalgia for now. I need to get ready for a Christmas party! Merry Christmas readers and have a happy new year! I hope I see you next semester (I have the best of intentions to write you more as I begin my journey through the nursing program).

Quater Life Crisis

mrnospace — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 05:42:38 +0000

I recently had my 25th birthday! YAY ME! It is kinda scary to think i am half way to 50 already. Time really just flies by faster and faster as you get older. I got to say though it wasn’t as scary as turning 20. 20 sucked. It was half way to 40, no longer a teen, and not old enough to drink.

I had a really fun birthday weekend though with my best friend coming to town and we all went to eat at Kobe Steak House in Omaha. It was a cool restaurant where they cook the food in front of you and do tricks and crack jokes. Best fillet minon steak I ever had. I also had imported Japanese beer it was good too. I can’t remember the name it started with an ‘S’ though (if you ever eat there order the fillet minon and get the Japanese beer it’s good eating).

We also went to a movie. Resident Evil something or other. It was OK, but we didn’t get to watch it in 3D I think it would have been better that way. Check your brain at the door though because this one will leave you scratching your head. Lets just say improbable is a recurring theme.

As for my crisis I am 25 and still in college. I have changed my major 5 times, but I am still wondering what I want to be when I grow up. My latest inkling is family paster/counselor.

I found a neat picture to go with this theme, it’s a candle for quarter life crisi apparently. Is crisi the pural form of crisis or is it crisiss or crisises or crisies?

Is there an Ebay support group?

mrnospace — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 04:26:59 +0000

I caught myself constantly checking Ebay over the past couple of weeks. It’s like I have a constant need to see if I sold something. I think it is partly because I want to get good feedback from my buyers, but really? Is it necessary? Will they notice if I drop what I’m doing to run to the post office for them instead of waiting til the next day? It feels like torture sometimes. In this day and age of instant everything, I found myself wondering why I haven’t received my positive feedback after dropping the package off at the post office, and why not? For all intensive purposes my job was done. But there is this thing called snail mail. Apparently it takes time to process and ship a package.

And that’s just selling on Ebay .Which I am very new to, just thought it would be a good way to sell a computer game I wasn’t playing. How could I have know it would lead to this. I find myself assessing the value and shipping cost of everything that isn’t bolted down. Buying on Ebay is another beast in itself. You have those deceptively cheap starting prices and the inevitable bidding war of “oh, it’s just a dollar more than my last bid.” Ya keep telling yourself that, idiot. I’m talking about myself of course because I started this Ebay thing to make some money and somehow ended up owing in the end. Tisk tisk.

View This Poll

Microbiology @ IWCC

mrnospace — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 03:27:55 +0000

Oh Microbiology, I have a love hate relationship with it. I love my class at IWCC, especially the lab. We get to do all kinds of fun gross things in there; such as, taking swabs from everywhere including our noses and throats and growing the bacteria on special nutrient agar till we can see them with our naked eye. We also stain them using various methods and view them under microscopes. We got to play detective for a couple of weeks till we identified a bacterial unknown we isolated from sampling various surfaces around campus. My bacteria was micro coccus. We usually just study bacteria in our lab (which isn’t very motile), but one week we got to bring in pond water samples to view under microscopes and that was fascinating. They were all alive and scurrying or wriggling about. I even got to see a flat worm with five digestive snack packs of organisms in its body!

New Seasons for this Fall

mrnospace — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 04:59:32 +0000

So many new t.v. shows this week! The fall seasons are upon us. I’m sure you all have your favorites, and you undoubtedly have already watched them. If you missed all the great season premiers (or any other show for that matter) you need to check out Hulu. I can’t always find the time to watch t.v. when it is on so Hulu has become very dear to me. The wifey and I watch more t.v. on the internet then anywhere else (fewer commercials and you can pause or rewind). Hulu is basically a poor man’s DVR that you can watch anywhere without a cable fee or programing it to record anything. We watch the shows together so Hulu lets us watch them on our time, and it’s free! We really like to watch Castle and Glee together, but my guilty pleasure is Biggest Loser. I think it’s cool that the fictional author in the Castle show has penned two real books that tie into the show. I am still planning on reading those someday… probably after I finish The Lost Symbol. Sometimes it’s hard to find time to read for pleasure when you have textbooks that need reading. We liked Mercy, but I heard it got the axe. Apparently we were among the few who liked it. Mercy was a show about nurses who worked in an inner city hospital. Since I am majoring in nursing it caught my eye, but we enjoyed the characters and the writing (for the most part). Speaking of canceled shows I want to give mad props to Firefly and Jericho, check them out. We are huge How I met your Mother fans, but we only watch that on our ipods while we work out at the IWCC gym (it’s our extra motivator to go to the gym). There are just too many shows to watch them all. Please leave comments about any of these shows or ones you think deserve props. More to follow.

Seconds

mrnospace — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 06:11:30 +0000

My second post! I had a great weekend, and I thought I would share it with you. The wifey and I went to Second Fridays again here in downtown Council Bluffs. It is basically an artist gathering that is supplemented by various small business owners. It is a friendly atmosphere and we love to pick the artists’ brains and discuss their processes since we too are artists at heart. They have always had a wide assortment of free snacks and Iowa wines. There is an older lady that makes woman’s fashion items (mostly hats and bags) out of various materials that she finds. Her business is called Reclamations from the Edge if I remember correctly. If you are a lady you should check it out. She is reasonably priced too. Talking with her I learned that there is another lady that comes and buys her hats just to resale them for profit. It has been a unique experience every time we’ve gone and it seems to get bigger as well. Ollie the Trolley was there to shuttle people around downtown and they had live string music at all the stops. We even won a bottle of Iowa wine during the door prizes drawing (last time we won a Robert Rauschenberg poster size print). Wifey and I love to go home and create art after getting energized by the artistic conversations and Iowa wine samples.

Here is the web address to Second Friday’s website if you want more information: http://secondfridays.wordpress.com/

Here is the print I won! Deposit by Robert Rauschenberg

View This Poll

My favorite thing about this semester is probably going to be…

mrnospace — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 22:58:15 +0000

Fall is my favorite season and my favorite time of year. The air is crisp coming from the cool evening breezes. The ground crunches under your feet as you plow through leaves on your way to football games with a cup of hot chocolate in your hands. The sweet aroma of burning leaves permeates the night sky. Harvest time is always a bustling event for the surrounding communities, and anticipation is building with Thanksgiving and Christmas around the corner. Maybe I am just biased for the season of my birth, but I am excited for this fall semester non the less.

View This Poll