This year has been a bit of a roller coaster, both academically and emotionally. I’m actually really happy to see this year wrap up and just be done with.

But I will be sad when I’m done all my Kinder Surprise eggs of the season…

I finished two more terms of nursing school this year, I’m very excited to be that much closer to finished my BSN[1. Bachelor of Science in Nursing, also referred to as a B.ScN or BScN.] and having had the clinical experiences that I had. I was able to hold newborns for the first time ever, learn how to properly assess a newborn, how to feed them and the ease of changing a diaper on an infant compared to changing a disposable brief on an adult. But even before that (in my January-May term), I learned about giving injections! changing dressings! the importance of ambulation after a surgery! I fell in love with surgical nursing. Not be confused with operating room nursing – totally different things! Surgical = pre-op and post-op. I just loved it and I’m so excited that my rotation in January-May 2014 will be on a surgical ward again. I also cared for 3 patients in a single shift for the first time ever in my fall term. I also learned that I would not like to work on a mental health ward – it is particularly emotionally draining, plus I didn’t have the best mental health experience because I was on a geriatric psychiatry ward while other students were placed on acute adult psychiatry wards and were more likely to see things that we learned about.

Feeling more like a nurse with every passing term and that’s an amazing feeling.

I took unexpected, and somewhat brief, hiatuses from social media this year – primarily because I couldn’t deal with being cheerful on the internet and I’m typically glass-half-full (for the most part) and I knew it’d be easy for people to tell that something was up, so I just preemptively took myself out of the equation. During those breaks, I focused a lot on me and taking care of me and then I was back in about two weeks, each time. But because of things that had happened (and revealed, dun dun dunnnn), I’m no longer looking forward to Valentine’s Day (or Single Awareness Day, whichever one you ‘celebrate’) and I’m looking forward to my week-long break from school in March instead because breaks = awesome.

Because of my up-and-down year, I decided that I would change things up a bit in 2014. I saw it over on Pinterest (but forgot to pin, of course), this idea of having a jar for the year and every time something ‘good’ happens, to write it down and pop it into the jar, and then go through them on New Years Eve at the end of the year. So I’m going to be trying that out for 2014 (and I can finally put my date stamp to good use).