Eight days and counting...

I know it has been a while since I took a moment to chat - I have been studying my hiney off!! Our brilliant team of instructors in the nursing program chose to schedule SEVEN exams in two weeks so we have been in a bit of a panic! We had a team of six professors when we began the downhill slide to graduation and in the middle of it all two of them retired! They passed their notes off to the remaining four professors and sailed merrily off into oblivion with no thought to the chaos that would ensue. The remaining four professors tried gamely to teach us the things we needed to know, but alas, this has proved to be a difficult task. You see, the questions for the exams are already written and logged into a database in the testing computers and apparently no one has a clue how to retrieve the aformentioned questions and actually get an idea of what the tests will be about! So we poor students spend hours industriously studying for exams on say how to interpret a "right bundle branch block" on an EKG and when the exam gets here we are instead tested on valve replacement surgeries! This is just an example of the semester crazies we have had. The cumulative GPA of the class has dropped significantly as you can imagine. Why don't we just study the whole book, you ask? Weeeelllll.... this semester involves about five textbooks varying in thickness from one inch to a full five inches! And I have discovered that there is a point where your memory is full and something must be deleted before you can add more! In other words, we can't memorize everything! So it has been frustrating to say the least and I have been in more than a bit of a panic.

It seems as though this is too long to be one paragraph so I am starting a new one even though I am really continuing on the same rant - bear with me! So I am praying and asking everyone I know to pray with me that the Lord will help me to study the right things and to pass these exams. I am not concerned in the least about the state boards - on the sample exams I keep taking every week I am ranking over 90% so I am good there - just need to graduate to get to take the thing! I have three exams left - only one is a problem. Tomorrow I have an exam in clinical practicum. This will involve things like showing the instructor that I can start an IV, do a neuro, respiratory and cardiac assessment on a patient and do a central line dressing change. They give us a paper when we arrive in the lab showing us a random list of things and we have to do them - so we don't know until we get there which of the skills we are performing. Not worried about that one - I have an A in clinical now anyway so I can totally flub up this one and still be okay! Starting an IV in a dummy arm is a no-brainer anyway! If I am not in a vein, we will never know! Next Monday is the one that really worries me. I need at least a 79 on that one and it is one of the ones that we are struggling with not having appropriate information to study. Prayers are greatly appreciated. Then Wednesday we have an Exit Review exam that will take about four hours. Again, not really worried about that one. I got the highest grade in the class when we took a sample of this one last semester.

Then on Friday is GRADUATION!! I really am having a difficult time wrapping my poor over-taxed brain around that one! It seems so strange that after three years this journey is coming to a close. My friend Lynnette recently took some pictures to use on an invitation for a celebration bash she is organizing:

On a different note, we finally did get out to play in the bluebonnets a couple of weekends ago. The kids had a ball. The boys enjoyed laying on the ground and rolling down the hill. I had fun taking pictures of them doing that - then they complained all the way home about itching! The sun was in our eyes, so the pictures aren't great, but still fun.