So, my first week of nursing school is just about over. I have to admit it was a bit rough. Just about everyone knows that nursing school in and of itself is intense. Well, to make things just a bit more difficult, my nursing school’s entire system was down. This has made it quite difficult to communicate with teachers. Not only that, none of the students had their schedule going into the first day of class. So, to say the least, it was a frustrating, diffcult, and an extremely stressful week. However, I’m trying to think on the bright side. So, here’s the bright side, I have one week of nursing school under my belt. I am here. I am in it. I CAN do this.

As one might image, this was an uncomfortable week for a type A person like me. I like order, I like organization, I love having things planned. This might be a reason why nursing is a good fit for me. Anyway, what I did to help my mind, my body, and let’s be honest, my sanity was to get everything in some kind of order. For starters, my nursing schedule is pretty hectic, it’s different on a weekly basis. So, I layed out my agenda, my Med Surg calender, my Patho calender, my Health Assessment calender, and finally my Pharm calender. I wrote in the notes section of my agenda, and color coded it to each class: For example, pink is Health, purple is Med Surg, light blue is Patho, green is Pharm. I also color code my notes according to this. I’ll go into more detail about color coding and organizing my notes in another post.

Monday: (Class times & room #)

(obviously, only if you have the room number, just in case, I have a lot of times, dates, and numbers to remeber so sometimes I forget)

Tuesday: (Class time & room #)

Wednesday: (Class time & room #)

Thursday: (Class time & room #)

Friday: (Class time & room #)

Then, I went to the monthly calender of my agenda and wrote down all of the days I have exams. I dont know about anyone else, but I like knowing when I’m going to have a hectic week so I can plan around it. See there’s that plan word again.

Now, there’s a little bit of order. That’s how I calmed my brain down after such a stressful, unorganized week. I will admit this week was tough, it was very overwhelming and I’ll also admit that I started to doubt myself. When these thoughts started to arise, I had to remind myself, “this IS what I want to do,” “I AM going to be a great nurse.” These are things that I have to remind myself and will continue to remind myself because I will get stressed and discouraged throughout this journey called nursing school. However, it’s about I acknowledge it, use it to my advantage (having some stress is good, it means we care) and move through it. Just because something is difficult doesn’t mean we should give up; it means we are going to have to try that much harder and put in that much more effort. This is why we remind ourselves, “this IS what I want to do,” “I CAN do this.”