The following was written by junior post player Hannah Dawson from Shelbyville, TN. Hannah is in her third year of the nursing program here at Samford and is on track to graduate as an RN in 2013!
The life of a nursing student involves one main thing, TIME MANAGEMENT. This is something that I had to learn quickly my first semester of nursing school, especially since that semester began during the end of regular season games and the beginning of the SOCON tournament. As a nursing student you spend an average (per week) of 8 hours in the classroom, 14 hours in the hospital and 2-4 hours studying each night (did I mention adding basketball into the mix). In order to make good grades, do well on the court and still stay sane, you must be able to manage your time well. Without time management and a good calendar with color coded pens for each thing, you life will end up being a completely stressful, loss of hair, crying mess. With time management, your life as a nursing student could be one of the most blessed lives you could ever have.
Three days of the week you spend in the classroom learning about EVERYTHING. Every little thing that you could ever think of that happens to the body is learned in those three days each week. The other two days are spent in the hospital applying what you learned those three days in the classroom. Here comes the time management between classroom and hospital. You must be able to make time to learn, practice, and study all the material you went over in class before going to the hospital to be properly prepared to care for your patient that day. You can never come unprepared to the hospital seeing as how we are dealing with lives and what not. The hospital consists of a long grueling day of standing on your feet for 8-9 hours walking around giving baths and meds to patients, changing beds (with the patients in them), chasing Doctors around asking them what they just wrote down because their chicken scratch is completely illegible and much more and to be completely honest, it’s the most fun EVER! You must be able to manage your time well in order to care for all your patients and get done everything that needs to be done within the day but to be able to go in every day and know that you are going to do everything in your power to help save that persons life is truly one of the most amazing feelings in the world to have.
Hannah (center) with teammates Kylie Black (left) and Ruth Ketcham (right)
Now outside of the classroom and hospital is where it gets a little tricky (yes, as if the hospital wasn’t tricky enough). Seeing as how I am a student-athlete that means I must throw basketball in my busy schedule somewhere, along with studying. Once I am out of class/hospital, I am usually running to either the gym to practice or O’Henrys coffee shop to study, they know me by first name basis now. I go to practice for at least 2 hours a day 6 days a week. I spend a total of 4 days of the week studying with a girl from my class at least 2 hours each day, we have been kicked out of the coffee shop a total of 5 times already (only a month into school!) because of being there so late...I feel like I live there sometimes!
Once I am done studying with Megan (my "study buddy") and basketball, the spare time I do have is spent goofing off with my teammates. It may seem like a lot to some but to me I wouldn’t have my life any other way. The life as a nursing student is truly the life to live!!! (Biased?? Probably.)
No comments:
Post a Comment