Why it is OKAY to Hate Clinical!

Today I am about to write something that may be a bit controversial: that it is completely, 100%, without a doubt... OKAY to hate a clinical rotation! Hell, you may even hate multiple clinical rotations. But I am about to come to you, right now, to let you know that hating a clinical does not mean you will hate nursing.

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Photo retrieved from https://www.nextavenue.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/6-Signs-of-Nursing-Home-Neglect-519661765.jpg

There is definitely a culture in nursing school, especially created by professors, that if you do not like your clinical rotation then nursing may not be the right major for you. The claim is pretty convincing. Clinical is your chance to get as close as you possibly can to what you will actually be doing as a "real life" registered nurse. So if you hate it, does that not mean you will hate being a nurse?

I remember a time during Level 1 of the nursing program, when I saw a meme about it being awful to wake up for clinical. Curious, I peeked at the comments to find that practically everyone said they were always excited to go to clinical in the morning. A few people did come out and say they personally did not like their clinicals, but their comments were attacked by others saying that they "should not be a nurse" or that they "did not take full advantage".



I kind of let this, and my professors at the time, get to me when I took my first clinical. I briefly talked about my first clinical once when I first started this blog, and I really did hate it. It was only a five day, eight hour geriatric rotation, but it felt like it went on forever. I was so excited that first day, that I arrived an hour and a half early! My purple scrubs and pearly white shoes were squeaky clean, my smile was huge, and my heart was pounding in my ears.

I remember walking in to that facility my first time, the scent of feces and old laundry immediately hitting me with a reality check. Elderly were scattered in the hallway with their wheelchairs while the staff whisked around them doing everything except pay attention. Call lights lit up the hall like Christmas while one nursing assistant did them all by herself. I thought to myself, "you just barely walked through the door. Don't judge it just yet."

I was assigned to an LPN for the day, who, like all of the other LPNs, was responsible for about twenty patients for her shift. She began loading up the cart, popping all of her patient's pills into cups all at once and walking her little cart to one side of the hall, working down. Medication administration was all very interesting at first. Except that, once she was done with morning medications, it was time for midday medications. She popped the pills for all of her patients once again, rolled her cart back down to one side of the hall and began working her way down the hall again. As soon as she was done with that, this repeated again for the afternoon medications. Not once did she do anything except chart and pass meds. She was too busy to give time to any of her patients.

The patients all seemed very depressed. Many had gaping pressure ulcers associated with their stay at the facility, likely because they were bed-bound and never turned on schedule. One wheelchair-bound woman in the hallway kept reaching out to me, moaning something I could not understand. I tried to figure out what she needed, but I still could not understand after she repeated it multiple times. My nurse groaned, "don't pay any attention to her. She always does that." Hesitant, I stepped away and went back over to where my nurse was passing out medications. I wanted to do more, but it was my first day, and I had no idea what I was allowed to do in that situation. The woman still watched me, with a look I could only describe as frustration that she could not communicate what she wanted. The woman sat in that wheelchair in front of the nurses station the entire time that I was there. I eventually told one of the other staff at the nurses station that she needed something, and the staff member simply shrugged and went on with her work. It broke my heart.

I remember getting into my car after that long first day, calling Chayton, and breaking down as I drove home. I hated how nobody cared. I hated that the nurses only ever passed medications. I hated that it took multiple washes before the smell of that facility came out of my scrubs. My experience was awful, and since that was my only experience to go off of, I began to rethink my choice in career. When my alarm clock went off at four in the morning those next four days, I absolutely dreaded getting out of bed.

Finally, towards the end of the rotation, me and many of my fellow classmates admitted that we dreaded coming to clinical. One girl even admitted that she rethought why she even wanted to be a nurse in the first place. I felt better after this conversation, to know that I was not alone. I hope, if you are reading this and are hating one of your clinicals, that you do not feel alone either.



The next semester, I took clinicals on med-surg and psych units. Although I am not super passionate about those units, and still dreaded getting up some days, I had a much better experience. I really enjoyed what I learned during those clinicals, and regained my appreciation for nursing. The next semester, I got to do OB. I was so excited to come to clinical every single day of that rotation. The day that I got to be in the Labor & Delivery unit, I got to watch multiple births and learned a ton about fetal monitoring. To be completely honest, I had tears well up in my eyes when I witnessed my first birth (I know... kind of embarrassing). I was so passionate about what I was learning in clinical. I found exactly where I wanted to be in my career.



In high school, I loved science and english, but I absolutely hated math. Each clinical focuses on a different subject matter, so why is that any different? The answer is that it is not different at all. You do not have to love every single clinical rotation to love nursing, because you are most likely not going to work in every single unit as a nurse. Everyone is different, which is why there are so many different specialities!

Another point is that there are so many factors that could influence your experience in clinical: the facility, your preceptor, your nurses, the other staff, the patients... The list goes on. Perhaps I would actually like Geriatrics, but the facility that I went to gave it a bad rep. If you hate a clinical, wait it out and see how the next one goes. If it is just as bad, then ask yourself: what makes it bad? If you really do not like any of your clinicals, then maybe you can rethink things a bit. But if it is simply the staff or your preceptor causing a bad experience, that does not necessarily mean that nursing is going to be a bad experience for you.

I have not yet experienced "real life" nursing, so I cannot speak on that. But I can say that just because you hate a clinical, does not mean you won't find the one that you are passionate about. Nursing school is all about learning, and that includes learning about what interests you (and what doesn't)!

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I hope that this post helps to demystify the "you must love all clinicals" culture in nursing school. I also hope that, if you are struggling to see past a clinical, that this shows you that you are not alone.

I've noticed a bit of a trend in my blog posts: that I kind of focus on the negative parts of nursing school more than the positive. I am sorry if this makes nursing seem, for lack of a better word, crappy to you. That is not my intention. The thing is, I feel there is a lot to learn from the negative experiences that I have had in school. There are tons of posts about how awesome nursing is, but you never see the ones about the struggles or the negativities.

I have grown a lot from the negative happenings from nursing school, and I want to be able to look back on this blog and remember the lessons I learned from those experiences. I do not want to be one of those peoples that forgets my bad clinical experiences, and then posts about how I "loved all of my clinicals" on a facebook meme.

Let me and the others reading this know in the comments which clinicals you hated and which ones you loved! Please hit the like button or share if you feel this post spoke to you, and subscribe if you want notifications of any of my future posts! I have lots of ideas (just not a lot of time). 😉 💜

The Patient, the Loved One, and the (Student) Nurse

I have not been on here for quite some time! I think it is a bit obvious as to why: nursing school is INSANE!!! I literally have no time to myself. Now, it is finally fall break of my Level II semester (Literally the hardest semester of my life!). I worked on this article back in March, a week after I was injured, but never posted it.

Enjoy!

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Within the first three months of nursing school, I have had an incredible and quite terrifying ride as a student nurse. Not only have I been faced with challenges in school, but also in life itself. In a matter of three months, I had been a patient, a patient's loved one, and a patient's (student) nurse. Although all three of these roles have been challenging and stressful in their own way, I have gained so much from them. Although I would never wish to be on the operating table or in the waiting room again, I would not trade these memories for the world. I believe experiencing these roles has given me the knowledge to become a better nurse. It has shown me what to do, as well as what not to do!

You do not have to be a nurse to gain from these experiences. If you work with people or, hell, if you have daily interactions with people, you can gain from putting yourself in someone else's shoes. I strongly recommend it. Now, I do not mean you should purposefully injure yourself so that you can see what it is like to be a patient. But if you ever find yourself on the opposite side of your role, just take a second to think about how you can make that experience better for others based on the good and bad things

The Patient

My Morphine-induced smile in the ER.

For those who do not know, I love hiking with my amazing boyfriend, Chayton. Nearly two years ago, we went on our first official date at Skyline park. There, we went off-trail hiking/rock climbing straight up to the peak of the mountain. On March 13th of this year, I talked him into going straight up the mountain like good ol' times. About halfway up, we ran into a problem with the lovely desert residents: cacti and bees. He got a small cactus spine stuck in his ankle and I got one stuck in the bottom of my shoe. As we pulled the cacti out of each other's feet, bees buzzed around us. It was an absolute nightmare. So we decided to head back down a different route. Chayton climbed down from the rocky part of the mountain between two huge rocks. I made a smart remark about how he was going to be like the guy from 127 Hours. Little did I know what was to happen... After a bit of trying to get my little legs to climb down, I finally got to him. There were cacti and bees everywhere. So I traveled a little bit downhill, then decided to head back up to the rocky part where there were less bees. There was a wall of rocks about eight feet tall that looked pretty stable. I got myself up halfway and reached up with my left hand to grab the ledge. When I tried pulling myself up, that was when it happened. 

It was so fast that I am not exactly sure how it happened. All I remember was seeing a rock fall toward s my face, and I stepped backwards out of the way. Not before having the huge top boulder slam down on my right hand before crashing to the floor. I immediately felt a tingling sensation in my pinky and ring finger. My immediate thought was "Oh, great. I broke them". I looked down at my hand to be greeted with something so much worse. In the movies, when something is cut off, they always show blood squirting out all over the place. It definitely was not like that, but it was still just as terrifying. The blood immediately started pooling in my left hand and dripped down my right arm. My pinky looked like one of those magic tricks where you pretend that you pulled your finger off. Except it really was (mostly) off. The first thing I thought from there was, "If I stand here any longer, I am going to pass out and they will have to helicopter me out of here! I need to run!" So I ran. Down the mountain. Screaming.

After a few yards of that, the nursing student and lifeguard in me kicked in. Chayton lent me his shirt to apply pressure and I elevated as much as I could comfortably. I once again took off. At the time, I thought I was pretty calm. I motivated myself to keep moving in my head. However, Chayton stated later that I was screaming the whole way down things like "Keep calm, Jenna!" and "Will you still love me if I only have four fingers?!" I ended up falling twice on my way down, both times getting a large amount of cactus in my behind. I tried to pull them, but I saw the stars. So I kept running.

About halfway down, I started to give up. I asked Chayton to call 9-1-1. I tried to tell the dispatcher not to send an ambulance, but, again, I must have not been in the right mind. By the time the police got to us, we had already made it back to the trail. They insisted that I needed a tourniquet on my arm. Everything inside me kept saying that was wrong for this type of injury. I told them no, that I had enough pressure on it, but they did it anyway. A bit further, the firefighters made it to us. They immediately removed the tourniquet from my arm and gave me fluids. When we made it back to the parking lot, they helped pull the cactus out of my rear and took my vital signs while waiting for the ambulance. There were about fifteen EMTs, police, and firefighters around us. As they looked at the hand, they said "oh, it's just the fingernail. Do not worry. It is going to be fine!" At this point, my adrenaline levels were so high that I hardly felt the extent of my injury. My being loopy was no excuse for lying.

"No," I said, "I saw it. I am a student nurse and can handle this. Just give it to me straight. Should we ice it so they can reattach it? Am I going to lose it?"

"No. It's just your fingernail," one of the cops restated.

At that point, I second-guessed myself. Maybe I was just overreacting. Maybe, with all of the blood, I became hysterical and hallucinated the whole thing. Temporarily, I felt better. Though believing it was just my fingernail made the truth that much more devastating.

They loaded me into the ambulance. The paramedic gave me my first taste of morphine, which sucked. I immediately felt respiratory depression and nausea. After that subsided, he quizzed me on opiates. I had a pharmacology test coming up and was suddenly super stressed about it. When we made it to the trauma room, I did not want that paramedic to leave. He was one of the only ones who did not treat me like I was incompetent.

During the initial assessment, the doctor came in to take a picture of it. He sent it off to the hand surgeon, and came back with the news. "Well, we are going to have to amputate." My heart suddenly dropped. Everything else he said about skin graft and bones went out the other ear. He spoke about how my "fingernail won't be too pretty" and how I "probably won't be able to paint it" as if my biggest fear was a crappy manicure. "There has to be something else," I spoke with a million different questions running through my head. He assured me that there was nothing. I screamed and kicked and threw myself around on the table. Although it was "just a pinky" as they kept saying, all I could think was "How would this affect my career? How would swimming feel different? Would I be able to draw and paint the way I used to?" Chayton came to comfort me and calm me down.

About thirty minutes later, the surgeon got on the phone with my mom. He said that the doctor misunderstood. In ten hours, he would attempt to reattach the finger. If he could not or the body chose not to accept it, then he would amputate and skin graft over the remaining bone. That was better, although I was still not too sure why he had to wait so long.

The next few hours in the trauma room consisted of getting my butt waxed free of cactus needles, watching a blood clot that was left sitting in my IV, and having my blood drawn three times because the lab kept messing up. I was finally brought to my own room in the ICU, where the best nurse thus far cared for me. She legitimately cared about my family's needs, actually helped me to the bathroom, and answered the call light quickly.

When we were moved to Pre-Op, I was terrified. I had just gotten morphine and oxycodone, so I was just a wee bit high in the sky. The two surgical nurses came in and acted as if I knew what was going on. Next, the surgeon came in. He explained that the surgery would only take fifteen minutes. I asked what he planned to do if he could not reattach it. Instead of showing me that he had a plan, he simply said that it would not happen. I was terrified that this would not end well, and not one medical personnel was willing to give comfort to this.

What happened after the surgery was a blur. I drifted in and out of consciousness. I asked the nurse at my bedside how it went. Without even looking away from the computer, he shrugged, "It went well. Ready to leave?" No one came to give me discharge instructions or tell me if I even had my finger still attached. No one came to tell me what happened in surgery or how to take care of myself until follow-up. My mom was given written discharge instructions that simply said, "Follow up in a week. Leave dressing. Elevate," then they hurried me out of the hospital without being fully conscious. I was still so heavily sedated that I do not remember how I got to the car or home. 

"Nurses make the worst patients," my professor once said. Maybe it is because I know a bit about how medical personnel are supposed to treat their patients that I am so critical of them. Some of the big no-no's I was faced with were: condescending attitudes, false reassurance, miscommunication, lack of professionalism, assumptions, lack of patient education, lack of reassurance, and lack of attention. All of which made me feel uneasy, doubtful, and terrified of what was to come.

The biggest issue I had was the false reassurance. Although this calmed me down for a moment, it only made the fall worse when I was told it would have to be amputated. Always be real with people. Do not make them think they are okay when they are not. You may think this is helping them, but it will only harm them in the long run. Some people are stronger than you may think, so just be honest.

It does not take much more effort to give a patient quality care. The nurse in the ICU was busy, but still had the time to walk me to the bathroom and wait outside to walk me back. The nurse in the ER did not put in the same effort. What if I were to go unconscious and fall? Now the ER nurse would have to spend the same amount of time correcting her mistake as she would have if she went the extra mile. Reassure them, but do not give false hope. Look at them when you talk, because they are human. Address their concerns and needs. Educate them as much as possible to avoid things that could have easily been prevented. 

Being the patient was honestly not the greatest. However, it showed me so much of what it feels like to be on the other end. Knowing what it was like gave me insight on how I can better help patients who have just been through hell. 

The Loved One

My boyfriend, Chayton, Post-Op.

In my opinion, being in the waiting room is so much more difficult than being in the hospital bed. At least that is how it is as a nursing student. Chayton and I took "twinsies" to the next level this semester. A few months before my accident, Chayton broke his fourth and fifth metacarpals (the bones that connect the ring finger and pinky to the wrist).

I remember racing to his house in a panic, because all I could hear was yelling over the phone. I ran across the front yard to his mom's car. Then, she sped to the emergency room. As Chayton groaned, the triage nurse took down his health history painstakingly slow. It took at least ten minutes before he finished the health assessment, Chayton still in a heavy amount of pain. He was taken back to get X-rays done. Finally, he was given Oxycodone for his pain, but the nurse never asked his name or date of birth, nor did she scan a wristband. Chayton asked the nurse for some water. After thirty minutes, I decided I would ask the nurse myself. I snapped at one of the nurses at the nurses station, "Um, he has been waiting to get some water for thirty minutes. Can we please get some?" Wow. I was that visitor. We then waited for about an hour total until he was moved to an actual room.

The respiratory therapist came in and set up the oxygen. While he was there, he thoroughly explained to Chayton what blood pressure was and what he looks for on the monitor. They started talking about beard care until the nurse came to have Chayton sign papers. Before leaving, he asked if he could get any of us anything. The doctor finally came in after about an hour or two. She immediately jumped into action for resetting the bone. She began to draw up an IV medication and looked at us, "This is Ketamine. We like to call it the Michael Jackson drug."

"Why is that?" Chayton's mom asked.

"Well, this is the drug that killed Michael Jackson." She blurted out. My heart began beating fast. Suddenly, I went from nursing-calm to loved-one-terrified. "Don't worry. The dose is not that high." She assured, but it was too late. My mind was running rampant.

As they began the procedure, the nurse asked his mom and I to leave. Luckily, or unluckily really, they allowed us to simply wait outside the room and watch from the window. I remember listening to him scream for me to come back, watching him kick and cry as the doctor pulled at his fingers. I peeked over at his mom who was keeping it way cooler than I was. "I need to stay strong for Chayton," I told myself. But it was too hard. His monitor began screeching. His heart rate was in the 120s and oxygen saturation was in the 80s. The respiratory therapist began shouting at Chayton, who was hyperventilating. He sternal rubbed him back to normal, but then Chayton would hyperventilate again. Chayton looked over at me with the worst kind of expression, one I could not even explain in writing. I could not do this. I left to the restroom to shed a few tears (in all honesty, though, I was bawling my eyes out). I heard him screaming behind me, "Where is Jenna?!" as I left. After the tears were all gone, I gave myself a pep talk in the mirror, wiped my tear-streaked face, and went back out there with determination.

After the procedure, Chayton was crazy. The ketamine had him asking the male nurse to stroke his face and telling everyone that they were beautiful. This nurse comforted him and explained to his mom and me what was going on. Chayton eventually came back to planet earth. They allowed him to rest and eat for a bit, and then the nurse came to discharge him. After explaining to him what he needed to do to heal, she turned and explained to me what I needed to do. She handed me the written discharge instructions, then asked if I needed anything else. I helped walk him out of the hospital.



Seeing someone you love in an environment you are familiar with, but unable to do anything to help was hard. I may not know everything about nursing; in fact, at that time I knew very little. Yet, having the base knowledge to know what is going wrong makes it that much worse. For example, I knew that his diaphragm could have relaxed to the point of death with ketamine. Watching him hyperventilate and seeing his oxygen saturation made me think he was experiencing that. I think being in this position as a student nurse makes you freak out even more than it should, because your mind runs rampant with what little you know.

It is important when communicating with patients to also communicate with patient's loved ones. The patient might be terrified, but so is the patient's family. In some ways, the patient and their family members are one. Whatever you say to one, you should say to the other. Educate them. I loved the way the respiratory therapist went above and beyond to educate us on what was going on.

Please also note that you most definitely should not joke about people dying from a medication when you are about to administer it.

The (Student) Nurse

My first time wearing those beautiful purple scrubs!

My first semester as a student nurse included a clinical at a rehabilitation and long-term care facility. The majority of the patients at this location were the elderly. Honestly, it was really hard to go to those five shifts. Every time my alarm would go off at four in the morning, it was not that it was early as much as I did not want to see how the patients were treated. In all honesty, this clinical rotation made me rethink nursing. If that was "nursing", I wanted no part of it.

I will give the staff this: they were very overworked. Each nurse had between ten and eighteen patients assigned to them. They basically just passed meds all day long, because there was no time to do anything else. Patients were all very sad, they did not want to be there, and they were lonely. No one ever seemed to talk to them. Call lights would be on for quite a long time before they were ever answered. The hallways would consistently smell like bodily fluids and were filled with patients sitting in wheelchairs, begging with their eyes for something they could not verbalize.

Once, one patient suddenly rocked back and forth and groaned. Her eyes were wide as she stared and followed me. I tried to tell a nurse at the nurses station that I felt she was trying to communicate something. She shrugged and went back to her work without delving any deeper into what I had claimed. This attitude was consistent with most of the other staff.

It is sad to think that places like this even exist. I am sure nobody went into the medical field thinking "I am going to give minimal effort in my career". I hope and believe that this facility was a bad case of desensitization and nursing shortage. Although it is hard to watch, it is important to see. Personally, it took a long time for me to have a positive outlook on this experience. Even to this day, I still feel uneasy about it. Eventually, with reflection, I realized that seeing desensitized nurses showed me exactly what I did not want to be. It showed me what a desensitized nurse looked like, and how to avoid being that person.

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With the first three months of my journey into nursing, I have had three very different experiences. Although there were more negatives in these experiences than I would have hoped, I would not change a thing about them. I learned so much from all of these experiences, and they each contributed to my growth as a student nurse and as a human being in general!

I hope you enjoyed my stories! I promise that I do not make this stuff up! My life truly contains one crazy adventure after the other. Comments, questions, or suggestions? Let me know in the comments! 💜

My First Exam (And How I Almost Failed It!)

First of all, I want to give a little shout out to my wonderful Cohort. We may not have chosen each other, but I believe we were chosen for each other. Each and every one of these wonderful ladies and gentlemen have been a shoulder to lean on, cry on, and review on. I do not believe that I would have made it this first half of the semester without their kind, helpful, and compassionate hearts.

Thank you, guys!

Now, let me tell you about my *wonderful* (*cough*sarcasm*cough*) experience with my first ever nursing exam. I had studied for the Health Assessment exam for around a week. I was as prepared as prepared could be! I was going in confident that I would pass this with flying colors! The day before the exam, I packed up my bags, made lunch, and laid out my scrubs. For those who do not know, I am a commuter student this year. I live about 45 minutes away without traffic. It actually tends to take me about an hour to get to school on Wednesday mornings due to rush hour. I wanted to get to school at 7:30 AM, because my class started at 8 AM. That way I would have plenty of time to relax, orient myself, and study a bit. I left at 6:30 AM. A whole hour and a half before my class!!! I even checked Google Maps to see how traffic was. It said “Estimated time of arrival: 7:28 AM.” Yes! Perfect, right?

No.

I turned off my data and threw my phone on the passenger seat, and was on my way. I was so deep in thought, reciting the acronym "ADOPIE" in my head over and over again. I did not notice my surroundings until I was three exits away on the freeway and at a complete standstill. After ten minutes of sitting in the same spot, I grabbed my phone and looked at Google Maps. The robotic voice blurted out, "Traffic is worse than usual." No, duh! "Crash ahead. Estimated time of arrival: 8:30 AM."

WHAT?!?!

I left an hour and a half early, but I was still due to arrive thirty minutes after the exam started?! In a panic, I text my Cohort letting them know the situation. They were all very supportive, telling me to just focus on driving and that it would be okay no matter what. Suddenly, I became the Fast and Furious. I put the car in reverse to get as close to the car behind me as possible, and then squeezed in front of the car in the lane next to mine. Sorry. I cut probably five people off in my journey to get to the nearest exit. Once on the street, I drove what felt like 30 mph over the speed limit, diving in and out of each lane to get past those going to slow for me. I was finally four blocks away, ten minutes before the test began. That was when I heard the blaring of a horn that made my heart drop. In front of me, the railroad crossing lights were flashing and a long train began to come through. I was really tempted to just punch the gas and go through it. All I could think to myself was: This cannot be happening!

Luckily, the train stopped four cars in and then began to back up. The railroad crossing arms lifted and then we were allowed to cross. I had six minutes until the test started. Unfortunately, my designated parking lot was on the opposite side of campus from the building my classroom was located in. That was a fifteen minute walk in itself. So, I decided to risk it and ask if I could park in the guest parking lot, which was right next to the building I needed to be in. When I pulled up to the security guard, I was already bawling my eyes out. "Can I please park here?" I asked, "I promise it is a one time thing. I am late for my first exam!"

At GCU, it is hit and miss with the security guards. Some are very nice, but others are straight up rude. "No." I was taken aback. "I'm sorry, but I cannot give you a parking pass. You can risk parking there and getting a ticket, but I am not in charge of parking passes."

"Fine." I growled and sped in to the parking lot. I had to go to the third floor, because it was a huge tour day. I grabbed my pencil and paper, ditching my backpack, which turned out to be a huge mistake (I will get to that soon). Then, I bolted down the three flights of stairs. As I was passing the security guard station, I noticed the same security guard I talked to handing out parking passes like candy. I rolled my eyes, but was too busy getting in the zone to get upset. Three minutes until the test.

My heart was pounding. I noticed three girls staring me down as I ran past them with purples scrubs and a red-streaked face. I made it into the large, middle courtyard space of the horseshoe-shaped building. I ran straight through the grass, not caring about the yellow tape around it or the fact that I was staining my brand new, white shoes. Two minutes. I finally made it to the base of the stairs.... My classroom was on the fourth floor... One set of stairs, turn, second set. I made it to the first floor. Three set, turn, four. Second floor. My lungs were burning. Five set, turn, Six. I bumped in to somebody on the turn to the next set of stairs. "Sorry," I wheezed. My vision was going a bit blurry. Seven, turn, eight. I was finally there. I wanted to pull a Rocky and throw my arms up in celebration, but I soon remembered that I was on a mission. I checked my watch, one minute until the test. I busted through the doors to the hallway. Thank God my class was the first door on the left. I not-so-gracefully plunged through the door. All eyes turned to me and it took everything in me to not scream, "I made it!". I grabbed my pencil out of my scrub pocket and scribbled my name on the sign-in sheet. Then, collapsed into the first chair I saw. I was hyperventilating with my head between my legs. I peeked around at my worried classmates. I was seeing double, and they were glowing. I could see them asking if I was alright, but all I heard was a ringing in my ears. I have asthma, and, unfortunately, I left my inhaler in my backpack when I bolted over to the classroom.

Luckily, my professor wanted to do a review session before taking the test. I got myself to calm down after about twenty minutes of deep breathing. Somehow, I ended up getting a 92% on the exam, which was so worth the running (I hate running).

After I was done with the exam, I laughed about the whole thing. "The things I do for nursing school," I whispered to myself.

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So there you have it. That was my stressful morning: thinking I was going to get a 0% on my first ever nursing school exam. I thought I was going to probably fail school all because of the traffic. It was honestly a miracle from God that I made it exactly on time. Sorry for not posting for a while. It has been a crazy past couple of weeks. Comments, questions, or suggestions? Let me know in the comments! 💜