my previous post was gloomy.

you, nice people out there, have no idea what it means to me that people i do not really know personally would actually take time to cheer me up or make me feel better. my thanks to all your words of kindness. it dawned on me that although it sucks to beat oneself up for stupid mistakes, it is equally disturbing to be at the opposite end of the spectrum. you know, when you make a mistake and don’t care one iota about your mistakes’ consequences. i suppose balance is the answer. staying in the middle is the solution. slowly, i will master that craft.

on a totally different matter, but a comment on that same previous post though, lori wanted to know how i got through it (meaning nursing school).

well, this is an interesting question to me. i know those of you who went through something as grueling, not necessarily nursing school, have your own unique story. after i share mine, i’d like to hear your versions.

let me start with a little background. i started taking a premed course initially, because my dad said “it would be good to have a doctor in the family…” he was working here in the US then as an LVN, and thought he had what it financially took to send one child to medical school. after two years, it was revealed to him in a form of a dream that he can’t afford the whole medical school thing.

i quit premed and concentrated on selling charcoal, hoping that business could save me form eternal poverty and starvation. it didn’t really matter that my face was unrecognizable at daytime, and scary at nightime, because of the black make up the charcoal left on my face, i was just glad i had something to do. i remembered i wanted to be a nurse since i was a little girl, but there is no way i can go to nursing school with my charcoal business income.

to make the short story long, an aunt who was working as a nurse here offered to send me to college, on two nonnegotiable  condition: that i took up nursing, and that i go to a christian boarding school of her choice.

i don’t know with you, but there is something very intimidating about being sent by somebody else (other than your own parents) to school. i lived in fear. fear that if i mess up my grades, she will just stop paying for my tuition, and then, what will happen to me? selling charcoal was a decent job, but it was not really what i wanted to do for the rest of my life. to me, having this fear constantly nagging in my chest meant that i was not entitled to fail, and i had to do everything within my power to finish nursing school with flying colors.

i had to study, study, study! and that is what you need to do too.

first, know what works for you. do you absorb more inofrmation if you are alone, or when you study with a group? do you learn more if you are listening to soft music, or when it is dark and quiet? do  you understand the lectures more if you take notes and study them on your own later? does having an inspiration, real or imagined, motivate you to study more?

although i love reading, nursing textbooks didn’t really excite me. they are thick, heavy, and impersonal. but guess what, i had to read them! i am not an introvert, but i am more productive if i study alone, surrounded by the beauty of nature, and silence. just before dinner, i would go to this secluded place, sit under a tree, and read, read, read. if i had big exams, i would read morning and afternoon one day of the weekend.

there is no way you will not get overwhelmed. the human body is one of the most amazing yet complex things to study. take each day at a time and focus on what you are discussing in your class that day. do not make it your goal to be an expert in anatomy and physiology just because you are tyring to learn about it. the more you study about a certain body mechanism, the more you realize how much more there is to learn.

i must admit i knew more theory when i was a student than now that i have been working for a few years. if you asked me back then why a patient with liver cirrhosis have jaundice and have ascites, i can tell you without flinching, the accurate scientific explanation with confidence that i know exactly what i am talking about. ask me now and i might end up mumbling some crazy sounding words, because really, it is not everyday that i need to explain things in a scientific way. on the other hand, ask me to insert a foley catheter to a 500 pound woman back then, and i might  have ended up crying in frustration because there was no way i would be able to pull that off then. now, it would be something i am able to do without much anxiety.

if you are committed to finish something, for whatever motivation or reason, you will. when you finally graduate, you are going to look back and say “i can’t believe it’s over!”

when you start taking care of patients with symptoms you’ve only seen and learned in class before, the nights of reading those boring medical-surgical textbooks, will eventually pay off. then yeah, slowly, it will sink in.

i do not know how this post started with some note of thanks, to a revelation that i was a charcoal dealer about 20 years ago, to how fear have motivated me to study religiously, to giving away some advice like i really have the authority, but that’s how it went.

if you got dizzy trying to make sense of whatever i said, go grab an ice cold diet pepsi, run the can through your forehead, till you feel relieved. when you finally get the chance to drink it, close your eyes and imagine you are in the bahamas, lying in the sand, just watching the water, with brad pitt (or angelina jolie) next to you, depending on who makes your heart beat faster. 

when you come back from dreamland, and realize that brad or angelina are nowhere, finish up your diet pepsi, and let’s hear your own stories of how you got through something difficult.