Preparing to Graduate

As you may or may not know, I am in the last semester of my nursing program which means this May, I will graduate which brings a mix of many feelings. I am so excited to not have homework and clinicals. I'm excited for my finances to stop heading in the negative direction. And I'm excited to take on new challenges as a nurse. But challenges are challenges. Nurses have so much to know and carry ample responsibility. I am positively terrified I am going to screw up and kill someone right off the bat.

Change always comes with hardship. It's almost always scary but exciting at the same time. I'm excited and nervous at the same time!

After graduating, I will cram my little butt off and take (and hopefully PASS) the NCLEX. (The NCLEX is the big test that nurses have to pass to become licensed.) After passing, the next step is to get hired somewhere! I would love to stay on the floor that I currently work on so hopefully there will be an open position around the right time (and that my manager still likes me, :P). And then it's just work, work, and more work to make headway on student loans.

In the fall, I will head back to school at UVU since Provo College only offers an associate's degree in nursing--I want a bachelor's. For the fall, I will be taking pathophysiology, statistics, and possibly another nursing related elective or two. Patho and stats are both beasts of classes and it's going to be so strange to go back to non-nursing classes. I am going to have to revive study skills that I haven't used in years since the way nursing tests are written are completely different than regular old GE-type tests. It will be interesting. Right now I'm so burned out on school that the thought of doing more school sends thoughts of utter revulsion into my very core. But I think the break over the summer will be just what I need and I'll be ready to take a crack at it full-force after those four months. I hope to be accepted in UVU's nursing program beginning in January.

Besides the career plans for the summer, other plans are beginning to fall into place. For one thing, Janessa and I are moving to a cute little apartment about a mile away. The apartments are adorable, we'll have a lounge and a hot tub and pool (which will be great for Awesomeness), and we're both excited to meet new people and continue to learn and grow. I also just auditioned for a Spanish Fork Community Theater's production of My Fair Lady. If I make it, that will take a good deal of my time. I'm excited though. It will be hard to balance with work, but it will be a great creative release at the end of the day (even though I will probably be getting up early again the next morning to head off to work). There are also a couple of possible road trips in the works that will be really fun.

For now, I'll just keep pushing through all this senioritis I've got going on!