Nursing orientation

I think I'm going to try to blog about nursing school as I work my way through it. We will have to see though. The way everyone is talking, I won't have time to pee, much less write a blog.

I had orientation the last two days, which consisted of a bunch of really nice people (current students and instructors) repeating the phrase, 'I'm not trying to overwhelm you or anything' over and over right before saying something terrifyingly overwhelming. They went over everything to expect, told us to kiss our families goodbye for two years, fed us a ton of cookies, and said things that made me feel like hyperventilating.

What? You want an example? Well my books this semester alone will cost somewhere around $900. Yeah... that's what I said too. Some of the current students told me that we were getting it easy. Apparently SPC got a huge grant that's taking care of a large chunk of other stuff that I would have to be buying as well otherwise.

Another panic inducing thing was my schedule. On paper it shows me in class basically from 8am to 3pm Monday thru Thursday. I thought that was a lot (I've been a part time student for a few years), until they told us that lab is open until 7pm Monday thru Thursdays, and Fridays from 9am til 2pm, and we are expected to be there when the lab is open. The students also told us that if we weren't, that our chances of success were nonexistent. We were also told that trying to work while in nursing school practically kills all chance of making it through. Thank goodness my wife and our family are so supportive.

As part of orientation we had to break up into groups and make a 'how to' video. My group got tying a shoe, and it was fun. As it turns out, the uber realistic peeing catheter practice penises are really popular props... they make great telephones, 'packages' to be wrapped, additions to a baby being diapered, and more... My fellow students have odd senses of humor, which makes me happy.

Anyway, all in all I had a great time, met some really cool people who I'm apparently going to be spending most of my time with for the next two years, and learned a lot about what to expect. I'm REALLY nervous, but excited too. This next couple years is going to be crazy, difficult, fun, enlightening, and apparently uber realistic peeing catheter practice penis filled.
I'm going to try to write about it as I go along. Maybe some incoherent rambling, maybe some fleshed out insights... no, probably just incoherent ramblings. We'll have to see.