exams – Imaginary Sunshine

NCLEX stress

Michelle — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 18:30:12 +0000

Since last summer, I’ve owned NCLEX study materials. I bought a few books off of Amazon and then they sat on my shelf for the better part of the summer. And then all through term 5. And, if I’m being honest, they moved with me for my first term 6 practicum and sat on a shelf looking pretty. Now they’re laid out in front of me and I’ve flagged many, many pages as I go through the review process, it’s a bit daunting to think that I’ve learned this much over the course of 3 years.

Many of my classmates have opted to sign up for NCLEX review courses that typically go for 3-5 days. But these review courses are often $400-500USD, which with the current exchange rate makes them incredibly more expensive (hello, poor Canadian dollar!) and that just makes signing up for one of these courses completely unattainable for me, at this time. While I’d love to be able to spend over $600CDN on an intensive review courses, there is the matter of a cash flow issue for me at this time. As in, I just don’t have it. Luckily, many others have passed the NCLEX without attending fancy review courses, and I will be making out a study schedule for myself when the term is over. I don’t want to wait too long after I’m done the program to write it, in fear of all that knowledge just falling out. It’s been a (little) while since I’ve done mental health, or maternity and pediatrics, that I really need to get my mind wrapped around that knowledge again (especially the medications, oy the medications!).

You’ll just have to excuse me as I go mostly silent on the internet again as I get to worrying and stressing over the NCLEX!

School is out for the summer!

Michelle — Fri, 01 Aug 2014 19:18:02 +0000

For 16 days at least, as I start up again on August 18th. No rest for the wicked!

I had my last summer course final today. Not entirely sure how I did, and frankly at this point (going straight from January until today), I don’t care as much as I probably should. That said, I know I got an A on the multiple choice portion (was done on the computer and there is the instant gratification of getting a mark straightaway) so it is just the written portion left to be marked (maybe by next week?).

What was my first act of summer fun? Ate ice cream for lunch. And last weekend, I got my hair cut (finally…):

One Down, Two to Go!

Michelle — Fri, 11 Jul 2014 21:05:48 +0000

I wrote a final this morning, which was called a ‘quiz’ by the esteemed teaching staff for my course. I may have rolled my eyes more than once when they first announced that the course had 2 quizzes, and three papers, where the quizzes are each worth 35% of our final grade. In what world is a quiz worth 35%? In what world do two quizzes make up 70% of a final grade? But I digress. Because that class is done! And I couldn’t be more excited!

Which leaves me with two classes, which I actually dislike more than my specialty course (High Acuity):

Nursing Research
Professional Practice

See, I can appreciate, and I understand, the importance of both of those above courses. They’re just dull as all get out with the mountains of reading each week for both classes. I may be behind on my reading… by a lot. But now that I’m no longer studying/cramming for high acuity, I can focus on those courses. Right? Right!

In other news, I’ve been tired of this theme for a long time. Long time. But, because of my sporadic posting, I haven’t gotten the motivation to change it up. But now that I’m seeing it more often, it’s kind of motivating me to change things up a bit! My goal is to post at least once a week, because what use is a blog about my life if I don’t post about it? So expect that! I’ve also considered combining Imaginary Sunshine with one of my other websites, Chelle-Chelle.com, and just making it one big smorgasbord of posts. But I might not, because I still love both domain names. The only thing is that it takes effort to keep them updated (and we all know how much effort I’d put in so far this year…), but I will see how I feel about it. I think what they both just need is a little facelift to become a little bit more energized!

Winter Break (Finally!)

Michelle — Sat, 14 Dec 2013 17:30:03 +0000

I finished final exams for my third term of nursing school on Thursday and I couldn’t be more happier! This means that I’m officially halfway through the program! I’m that much closer to becoming a registered nurse and I’m still excited about my future career – this is how I know that I made the right decision with this program/profession/career choice. It was this or actually, you know, using my first degree. But then I’d be working in a lab or something for the rest of my life, and that’d just make me sad.

But you guys – I’m that much closer to becoming an RN. This is the dream. Next term, I’ll be on a medical or surgical ward. Then I’ll be in community or public health in August-December. And then come January 2015? My last term of nursing school. I get to have a say in what kind of ward(s) I’ll be on and, even better, I get paid to do it. Real money! Income! My income may be higher than my expenses for the first time since my first university experience! This is awesome! I’m likely to request my preceptorships to be in: surgical (post-operative), emergency or… pediatrics. I fell in love with pediatrics during my rotation. Sick babies, toddlers, young kids, teenagers. It’s such a different feeling and I loved it. But I only get two different preceptorship spots, so I’m likely going to choose surgical and emergency. This is because pediatrics is a specialty (more so than the others, although emergency/trauma is one too…) and I’d lose some of the skills that I could develop early on in a medical or surgical ward.

The last few weeks have been full of knitting, jewellery making and studying. Oh, and drinking Chai tea lattes. I’m honestly half-convinced that I am made of Chai tea at times. I’ve recently made the switch at home from regular tea (typically a green tea or Orange Pekoe) to hot chocolate, which also meant that I had to make the switch from my usual mug to this one:

Why yes, my snowman mug that wants you to believe in the magic of Christmas does have a hat for a cover! It’s the most awesome thing ever. I only use it in the month of December. You know, to preserve the magic of the holidays. And because it holds a decent amount of hot chocolate.

My plans for the holidays include a lot of baking (shortbread, sugar cookies – iced and uniced, (cup)cakes, and possibly a pie or two. I love holiday baking! As well as some reading (for fun), knitting and crocheting (holiday gifts) and possibly making some more jewellery. I actually made quite a bit during the term (21 pairs of earrings and 1 bracelet), so I may not. But my holiday plans do not include going shopping for presents as I already finished that. Back in November. Last year I didn’t do any present shopping until I was done finals and it was just awful. This year I learned from that mistake and got it done early.

Hopefully I’ll be better at blogging during my break, fingers crossed!

Study Mode: On

Michelle — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 08:22:02 +0000

Not a whole lot to report, but I have the urge to just blog right now. Granted, I’m starting this at 11:57pm on Friday… So yay, this’ll be posted on Saturday, of course. I don’t know why I felt the need to mention that, I mean, you can tell by the date stamp when this post goes up. I may schedule posts over at BlytheLife.com (which is the only reason why posts go up three days a week over there, because I schedule everything like a month in advance, because I’m cool like that), but I don’t do that here. Mostly because it’s my personal blog and it seems weird to schedule posts for that? I mean, I used to do ‘sponsored’ posts here, but I haven’t done that in ages. Mostly because people don’t seem to think that bloggers are worth as much money (for the most part), so all my posts are all just written for me now (yay).

And now I’m all rambling…

So I’ve been working on study notes for the last week. I actually got up early enough to head out to school on Tuesday to study in the library. All the other days I either woke up around 8am (when I wanted to be at school already) so I just stayed at home to study. Which worked well, because I love the fact that I can just stay in my room in my pjs and comfy fleecy robe (which is warm!) and just work away on my laptop. I’ve also been watching podcasts during my study breaks (and listening to them as well). Mostly knitting related, because I’ve suddenly fallen back into knitting (I did take a loooong break without knitting a darn thing). I haven’t been able to find any crocheting podcasts that I like. I’m a big fan of the ones with video, not just audio, because I like getting to see the projects. I also caught up on the Savage Love podcast. Because who doesn’t like to listen to Dan Savage answer his caller’s questions about sex? (The answer: prudes.)

I’m actually ahead of my studying schedule. I finished all my study notes for zoogeography & paleogeology. I’m almost done going through learning goals for my climate change class (whoot). I finished the notes for my parasitology take-home final, which is another essay. I did a little bit of outline for that paper, not as much as I would have liked to have done, but I did most of it. I’m hoping to finish the climate change study notes & parasitology paper outlining Saturday morning, because I’ll be going out for lunch with the family and then listening to my sister’s choir sing Christmas carols in the mall (horrible acoustics there, just got to say…).

I got an email from an offlinefriend asking me why I never blog about Clay anymore… Not sure if she was more concerned or if she was just being nosy. I’m going to go with concerned, because being nosy is never cool. There’s not really a whole lot to report on the boyfriend front. We are still together, we had our third anniversary in September of this year. He works a stupid amount of hours (like seriously stupid amount of hours) and I spend a lot of time studying. Well, I always have an abundance of free time to spend with him, but he works what feels like 24/7. It’s probably closer to like 12-16/7, but that’s still a lot of hours in a week and he does need to sleep. I’ve also been using my sadly boyfriend-free time to work on his Christmas present. It’s going to be awesome. And he’s going to love it. Mostly because I say that he will… I’m really trying to put together something thoughtful and practical and useful and all those things. But I always end up coming up with something impractical, but still super awesome. So we’ll see how that goes… Wow, rambling. We also don’t live in the same city (maybe ~30-45min drive, depending on the the traffic, so it does make things difficult at times. But I don’t know, I haven’t been all gushy about the time that we do spend together, because if I did, my blog posts would be like “So, I saw the boyfriend and we did A and he made me B for dinner.” and I would also have to totally censor my blog posts from some of the activities that occur, for obvious reasons… And with that… Change of topics!

This didn’t really get mentioned on the blog, but my dad went away on vacation/trip/whatever for three months. He went to visit relatives and whatnot. Came back with a lot of gifts, which is always appreciated. He was away during my birthday so he brought me back this:

Yes, it is another Blythe doll. (He also got me another one, but she’s under the tree for Christmas.) The doll’s stock name is Simply Bubble Boom. She’s a limited edition doll, at 1500 dolls in this model. She was actually part of a trio of crime-fighting skaters. Yes, I said skaters. She came with some super cute orange skates, not pictured. The other doll that my dad got me for my Christmas present was Simply Sparkly Spark (who has blue hair!) and the last of the trio (that I’m not getting) is Simply Thumpty Thump (who has a bright purple hair colour). I’m really happy with her. Her hair is a neon reddish-orange, so it looks rather pink in some lights and rather orange in others. Which is kind of really awesome. I decided name her Moxie, and she is my 8th Blythe doll and first in the FBL mold.

(For those who don’t really like Blythes or just dolls in general; sorry about the photo and the blurb… But I like ’em! And I do try to restrict dolly talk to the designated blog when I can. But I was just super pleased at getting a new doll for my birthday… and there will probably be photos of my Christmas doll too.)

Guess what?! :D (!!!)

Michelle — Fri, 07 May 2010 07:35:10 +0000

So I passed calculus, just wanted everyone to know… because I’m so fucking happy about it. *Ahem* Anyways… Maybe a photo would help me emphasize my happiness over passing calculus?

Yeah, that happy.

Ahem. Not that I won a gold medal or anything… But now I’ve got all my grades in, yay! And I can take the biometrics course that I am required to take next year now (because I’ve passed calculus), yay! (Yeah, I’m excited about getting to take biometrics, clearly there is something wrong with me.) Oh joy. *dances*

(I’ll be definitely writing about something a touch more interesting later.)

And the anti-derivative of e^(1.05x) is…?

Michelle — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 22:33:30 +0000

Dear self,

I love you, most days. See, I started off with a compliment!

But for the love of my freaking sanity, could you please remember derivative and anti-derivative rules when it comes to trig functions and e? I know you hate e. You wish you could kill e and get rid of that letter from all of mathdom forever, but you can’t. It’s sad, but it’s true. e is here to stay and you need to be able to remember, in a test-taking situation (i.e. this Saturday!), how to derive and find the anti-derivative correctly.

Sincerely,
The girl who’s stressing over the stupid practice problems (that are always wrong because of stupid mistakes, fuck.)

I kicked invertebrates zoology’s butt :D

Michelle — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 02:40:54 +0000

So I had my final for my comparative invertebrates zoology class today (it’s a prerequisite for a lot of the classes that I want to go on and take for my upper-level courses – including animal behaviour, the insects class, marine invertebrates, etc.). And I am so fucking glad that I went over the study guidelines so much over the weekend and in such detail. Everything that was required for us to know on the study guidelines was on the test. Also, we had a bonus question that was what was the course number (i.e. kind of like for PSYC 100, the course number would be 100) of the 4th year biology course that he recommended (it’s not going to be available until Sept 2011 though, hopefully I’ll get to take it, it sounds awesome!) and that was worth a total of 8 marks on my final. My final is out of a total of 200 marks, so the bonus mark was essentially 4%. 4%!

Dear Professor L.,

I’m solemnly regretful of the negative things I may have allegedly said about you in my last blog entry. You’re kind of super awesome. Now just make sure that your TAs are super generous when marking (especially when they get to my test!).

Sincerely,
Michelle

I left the exam room (about 90 minutes from when the exam started – the first person left an hour into the exam, we’re allowed 2.5 hours to write the final) at the same time as another girl and she was visibly upset because she said she didn’t realize we’d have to draw so much (which was mentioned, a lot, on the study guidelines) and that she thought the exam was “completely unfair” for those who didn’t have enough to study for it (???). I didn’t share the same sentiments, but I didn’t say that quite out loud.

Oh, note to self, don’t go into an exam without eating first! I ate breakfast at around 7:30-ish and didn’t eat lunch before my final (which was at noon…) and my tummy started rumbling at me and making its presence generally known just 20 minutes into the exam. Oh self, stop being such a distraction.

Hope you all had a wonderful Monday! I’m back to studying for my three remaining finals (math, biochemistry, vascular plants).

All the days of the week look the same to me after a while.

Michelle — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 08:32:15 +0000

I suppose I should have explained in my last entry that both myself and my sister already have valid bus passes, Alex. It’s not the first time that I’ve separate from my family or my sisters and I opted to take public transit home for whatever reason, we know the regular schedule pretty well, which does help. It wasn’t a big deal at all.

Anyways… My psychology final was easy peasy and was done fairly early by a lot of people in my class. The exam started at 7pm and we were allowed 3 hours to write it. The first person who handed in their exam left at around 7:40pm (when I first noticed the time). See, the exam consisted of 2 essay topics (we were given 8 possible essay topics ahead of time, knowing that 2 of them would show up on the final) and there were also a list of words that we would have to supply definitions for. Now, because the midterm had 8 terms, I expected more than that for the final (the midterm had 8 words and 1 essay, it was reasonable to expect like 16 terms with the 2 essays) but there was only 8 terms to write out the definitions for. I handed in my exam paper and left at 8:02pm. I got home much earlier than I honestly expected – I thought that I would need probably ~2 hours for the final. Needless to say, I still tired after studying nearly non-stop for that psychology final for so many days and hours… Only to have it all over in one. Can’t win them all, can I? It doesn’t even feel like it was worth all the trouble that studying and the preparation was. Oh well, it all works out in the end.

But getting home early has its advantages. Like being able to plan how I’m spending my first entire school free day tomorrow. For starters, I’ll be going to the bank, then off to volunteering for a few hours. Then I will be hopping onto a bus and heading to this awesome store where I will hopefully be buying copious amounts of wonderful yarn (there’s a sale going on… $2/ball for wonderful yarny goodness – but I haven’t been “allowed” out of the house, and I only found out this weekend, so I haven’t gone – yet). Then it’s to the library, where I’m picking up a hold, then off to finish wrapping up K’s birthday gift and then hopefully dropping it off before Christmas. Note to self, send her an email about that so she knows I’ll be dropping it off soonish. For some weird reason, I’ll be all into making or buying presents… But when it comes to the actual wrapping portion… I’m a bit slow in terms of it’ll be sitting in a bag (to keep it clean!) and be sitting… and sitting.. and sitting… there. Until I remember that “Oh shit, I need to give that to someone!” before, you know, I forget what it’s sitting there and it magically gets incorporated into my everyday wardrobe and then I wonder where on earth that present went. Yeeep, that’s me.

On the brightside, now that I’m officially on my winter break, it means that I can clean my room. Or at least organize it. Sort of. A little bit, maybe. I’ll start by taking those new shirts I bought out of the shopping bags and putting them into my closet or wardrobe. See, I can be really productive at times.

It’s late. I started writing this when it was still Monday, and my laptop is now informing me that it has been over 29 minutes of Tuesday so far. I got distracted by writing an article about amigurumi for chelle-chelle.com, as well as reading threads over at Ravelry (wonderful resource if you’re looking to crochet, knit, spin [yarn] or dye [yarn], by the way).

Hope everyone had a wonderfully awesome Monday and that everyone has an even better Tuesday.

Saturday’s almost over… =)

Michelle — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 07:57:31 +0000

What’s a girl to do when she’s the only one in the house who doesn’t leave the house? (Because everyone seems to think that ‘psychology final on Monday’ is synonymous with ‘making sure Michelle realizes that she is under involuntary house arrest’. So I didn’t go to the crafts store today, despite a somewhat decent sale on beads, jewellery findings and yarn (argh). I didn’t go to the grocery store and get to pick up more coloured sugar for baking purposes (I have a full container of red but no more of green…). I didn’t change out of my pjs today (I swear, the only good thing about not leaving the house). But oh, I was still the “only one” who was available to cook dinner though (because one sister was out, the other was ‘busily crocheting’ – or rather, attempting to crochet, and my mom was watching television).

Anyways… Today I did more essay prepping (yay!) and then emailed back and forth with my friend who’s taking that class to see what we’re hopeless on. Unfortunately, my psychology prof is an idiot and cannot string together sentences that are easily understandable by university students. It’s one thing to translate part of the topic into everyday English, it’s another to be able to translate the entire topic into everyday English for easy understanding. Oh, I’ve also noticed that people in organic chemistry are still posting on the discussion boards. The final was on December 10th and there’s a thread going on about ‘exam weighting’ and ‘What did you think about the final?’ that each have over 200 posts, and counting. It’s a little odd. Do my fellow sufferers of organic chemistry have nothing better to do than to post and whine about the final exam and what they think would be a fair weight for the final in comparison to the two midterms? Obviously not.

On the other hand, someone posted on the discussion board for my invertebrates biology class that I’m taking next term (the one that I’m really looking forward to! Crustaceans, insects, worms, the whole nine yards!) about how they’re really looking forward to the class. I replied with a very enthusiastic “Me too!”. Have I mentioned lately how much of a dork I am? Then again, I’m the girl who used her organic chem model set to fashion a bracelet for a day or two before. Ugh. Note to self, stop making myself seem like a complete geek online. Not that it can be helped.

I finished a scarf for my mom’s Christmas present… In a colour that she likes, if you noticed some of my tweets tonight. I started one scarf but she noticed it and commented on how she wasn’t a fan of the colours (tear), so I started a new scarf in a more open pattern (so it was finished faster, but it was still nice looking!) and finished that tonight. I’ll finish the other one some other time, it went back into my closet for now. I even added a fringe to it. And now I know what my sister bitches whenever she decides that a fringe would look nice on something. Why? Because they’re a PITA to do, that’s why!

Anyways… Oodles of photos to be taken tomorrow, plus lots of studying and reviewing before my final on Monday (7pm, whoot… I hate evening finals. You have the entire day to go ‘zomg, what does _______ mean?! and hopefully find out what it means.). Hope everyone had a fabulous and stress-free Saturday!