My name is Michelle, and I’m officially a third of the way through my school’s nursing program and that much closer to qualifying to write the CRNE[1. Canadian Registered Nurses Examination]. My school doesn’t have letter grades, but according to my other post-secondary school that’s an A average.

I just got my final grades in for the term and I have (again) a GPA of 85%! My highest grade was in Clinical Skills (clinical is a pass-fail course, so no percentage for that), which makes me happy as it’s one of the most important for considerations of preceptorship choices. Having good marks in clinical skills, pathophysiology, microbiology and immunology  are the makings for getting a good preceptorship choice. Possible choices right now include: emergency, med-surg or high acuity. I adored my clinical rotation in the surgical unit, but I’m curious about emergency. Not because of the medical shows that I watch/used to watch[2. Grey’s Anatomy, ER, General Hospital – which is more about mobsters than medicine.], don’t get me wrong. Medical shows are wrong and are all about the drama. For instance? On-call rooms? Haven’t come across one at all. Maybe it’s an American hospital type of thing. Also, why are the IVs never dripping in tv shows? It’s all wrong – I’m a joy to have around when a medical drama is on, I swear. I don’t get to make preceptorship choices until (I think) January 2014 and my preceptorships don’t start until January 2015 – never hurts to think ahead! My next term (August-December) and my clinical rotations are: mental health/psych, maternity and pediatrics.

As for my summer classes… Lots of reading, with stupidly expensively reading materials, and discussions about things that I don’t actually care about. It’s… required. If it wasn’t, I would spend my summer doing fun things – like vacationing, reading for leisure, working on blogs. Instead I’ll be doing things like: reading for school, vacationing, working on blogs… It’ll be interesting an interesting summer, that’s for sure! I’m hoping that my grant money[3. For being severely low income. I’m eligible for a Part-Time Studies Grant for Low Income Individuals because I made less than $23k in the 2011 tax year.] comes soon as I, unfortunately, have greater expenses than an income (comes from being an unemployed student).

Readings and more readings. Such is my life.