Category: Nursing Ponderings

What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Softer

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mer­cies and God of all com­fort, who com­forts us in all our afflic­tion so that we will be able to com­fort those who are in any afflic­tion with the com­fort with which we our­selves are com­fort­ed by God. For just as the suf­fer­ings of Christ are ours in abun­dance, so also our com­fort is abun­dant through Christ. But if we are afflict­ed, it is for your com­fort and sal­va­tion; or if we are com­fort­ed, it is for your com­fort, which is effec­tive in the patient endur­ing of the same suf­fer­ings which we also suf­fer; and our hope for you is firm­ly ground­ed, know­ing that as you are shar­ers of our suf­fer­ings, so also you are shar­ers of our comfort. 
2 Corinthi­ans 1:3–7 NASB

Nursing School Update — Aced Chem. Treading Physiology Water

Health and heart strug­gles con­tin­ue, but I did pull an A in Chem. Phys­i­ol­o­gy is prov­ing a bit of a strug­gle, just get­ting every­ing done. 

The late sum­mer ses­sion I will be tak­ing Phys­i­ol­o­gy & Lab, and Nurs­ing 209 in the ear­ly fall ses­sion before tak­ing the TEAS VI exam a cou­ple of times before apply­ing to the Nurs­ing Pro­gram for the March 2019 cohort. 

Nursing School Update — Resuming with Chem 109

So after an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly dif­fi­cult year of health and heart, I will be resum­ing my nurs­ing degree track with Chem 109: Chem­istry for Health Pro­fes­sion­als on Tues­day, May 1st. I’m look­ing for­ward to it with equal parts antic­i­pa­tion and trepidation. 

The late sum­mer ses­sion I will be tak­ing Phys­i­ol­o­gy & Lab, and the ear­ly fall ses­sion will round out all of my pre­req­ui­sites need­ed before tak­ing the TEAS VII exam and apply­ing to the Nurs­ing Program. 

Ear­ly spring ses­sion will be my first oppor­tu­ni­ty to take Nurs 209 the intro­duc­to­ry course with clin­i­cals. I haven’t yet fig­ured out how I’m to pay for that and keep a job as the clin­i­cals are dur­ing day­time hours. Pray­ing for wisdom. 

Nursing School Update — Approaching Roadblock

Class­es at Colum­bia Col­lege have been absolute­ly fan­tas­tic, as I work to earn the sci­ence cred­its lacked by my Bach­e­lor of Arts degree in Com­put­er Sci­ence. I’ve now tak­en Pre-chem and Clin­i­cal Micro­bi­ol­o­gy with lab in-seat in the evenings and have achieved sol­id A’s in both.

Alas, nei­ther A counts towards the Sci­ence GPA that will be eval­u­at­ed in con­junc­tion with my even­tu­al per­for­mance on the ATI TEAS VI exam, but they are good indi­ca­tor, that, with the prop­er accom­mo­da­tions, as well as increased matu­ri­ty, I can per­form well in aca­d­e­m­ic pursuits.

This ses­sion I am reluc­tant­ly tak­ing a 3 hr course in Med­ical Ter­mi­nol­o­gy that won’t count towards either the Asso­ciates in Nurs­ing or BSN in order to meet min­i­mum enroll­ment hours for my finan­cial aid pack­age. I have hopes that it at least will be ben­e­fi­cial in future cours­es, though a great deal of it is review.

Fol­low­ing this course my progress will be at a stand­still until I can fig­ure out a way to pay for school. I’ve exact­ly one year of course­work remain­ing (course sched­ule per­mit­ting) before I would be ready to apply to the Nurs­ing pro­gram. I’ve reached the aggre­gate lim­it for sub­si­dized fed­er­al loans (and I had hoped not to accrue more debt for this). My attempts to find full-time employ­ment with Colum­bia Col­lege which would yield the ben­e­fits of a full tuition waiv­er have so far proven unsuc­cess­ful, but thank­ful­ly my exist­ing employ­ment, due to end July 31, has been extend­ed for anoth­er full year, so I am secure… if not able to advance my degree pursuit.

I am decid­ing to treat this as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to try to get cre­ative and to be care­ful with my bud­get to see if I can­not man­u­fac­ture a way to con­tin­ue… like­ly not in the fall, but per­haps in the spring semester.

Pray­ing and trust­ing God. Very grate­ful for what I’ve been giv­en so far and for the pro­vi­sions and oppor­tu­ni­ties. So aware of how blessed I am. 

Yeah, um, so that happened…

I take a bewil­dered look around and find that I, a 42 year old man who’s clear­ly fail­ing fast, am a brand spankin’ new stu­dent at Uni­ver­si­ty. When did they start let­ting all these chil­dren into high­er-learn­ing? $108 to rent a text­book for 6–8 weeks? Pray­ing for strength as a some­what fright­en­ing new adven­ture commences.

They’re all using these lit­tle flat pock­et tele­vi­sions with­out an aer­i­al. They seem to think noth­ing of get­ting fin­ger­prints all over them.