This year has, by far, been the most stressful year of my twenty years of life.
Just a few months before I turned two decades old, I lived through my most challenging summer; this was the summer I began my nursing school journey. That summer, I learned a few important lessons which helped ready myself for future experiences:
1. Enjoy loving yourself
Sometimes intimate relationships can get 'sticky' - meaning, they encourage you to lose yourself, lose your identity, as you become wrapped up in a coupled-relationship. I had lost my identity, and believed myself to be worthless on my own.
Since then, I have regained my personal identity and am filled with such a happiness more so than I ever had when I has lost myself within a 'sticky' relationship. It can be so beautiful when you get to the point in your life where you find your inner strength and are perfectly joyful waiting on God to make the move, becoming more and more like the person with who you want to end up.
2. Late nights are the norm
Nursing school is jam-packed with a lot of information; you can either stress out and cry while you study, or you can just take it {and try to not cry}. Late nights have always been my thing; I would stay up 'till wee hours on Friday nights during high school just to write {oops, I'm a geek}, but when you have had a long day and are ready for a nice long sleep, late night studying can get discouraging. Just never sacrifice good sleep for just 2 more points on a test; don't ever over study if it is going to sacrifice your sleep. Nursing school is 94% studying and 6% sleep {6-9% actually- depending on your functional level of sleep; I am about 7-8% since I need around 7-8 hours of sleep per night to function properly}.
The summer transformed into the fall semester, the start of my Junior year. It was exhilarating, stressful, anxiety-producing, and really scary. There were many times where, during clinicals for instance, I had to jump out of my comfort zone in the communication and care of patients. It is funny to be able to reflect back at these experiences and be able to see how far I have come just in a year with my nursing care practice.
The fall gifted me with a multitude of lessons, life-long friends, and mental breakdowns.
1. Take your textbooks everywhere. . .
. . . even if someone is going to give you a funny look. During your pre-clinical sessions and clinical rotation, you may have some serious downtime; if you don't bring something to study, you pretty much just wasted that much time of you sleep for tonight.
2. Early mornings aren't that bad
I am not a morning person, and I probably will never be, but after a few good early morning in a row, you get used to it. Make sure you set your alarm, multiple alarms just to be sure; there have been many a time where I have awoken about the time I was supposed to be leaving my house {that is what happens when commute and you live about an hour away from your school}. And when in doubt, just drink a gallon of coffee.
3. Don't buy Starbucks on the reg.
So, I still struggle with this, and not so much the Starbucks part. We have a perfectly suitable way, at my house, to make coffee which can, in the end, save tons of money, that is, when compared to picking up coffee every morning from the drive thru at Starbucks {or the Coffee Scene, or any other coffee place which suits you}. For some reason, that pay-too-much-for-your-coffee taste of coffee shops is just a lot more tasty than the coffee I make at my house. It can be hard, and I still struggle with it.
Since then, I have tried to turn my coffee-buying habit around into a weekly present to myself for getting through the week with adequate sanity.
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Dear Elizabeth,
I believe it is winter right about now, pretty cold outside still. I know you aren't always a big fan of winter, but remember that you dislike the heat of summer just a little bit more. Enjoy wearing leggings and over sized sweaters to class; in the hotter months, you are going to look down at your shorts and wish winter to be back again.
There are tons of things you have planned for this new year, the 2016 year; you even blogged about it not too many days ago! That hiking idea is sounding pretty good right about now, to be honest. But, your 2016 "year of greatness" is not going to go anything like you have planned.
You are going to begin this wonderful second full semester of nursing school with a new clinical group; they are going to love you and you are going to love them, even if a few individuals take a little bit of warming up to. There is no need to worry, which I know you have been doing.
Something is going to happen though, and it will be when you least expect it. Your life will flash before your eyes; many days will be filled with tears and lack smiles or any optimistic thoughts. You will meet many new people, and experience many many challenges; you will not realize that all of this is a blessing until much later in the year. There will come a point where you will be stripped of your motivation to keep fighting through these challenges; you many even think a few times to yourself that you would have been better off just not surviving. Don't worry, thinking these things makes you nothing more than what you are, an perfectly loved imperfect child of God.
There will be one challenge which will drive you crazy; you will very hesitantly accept the reality of what should be, and when you do, God will bless you with a reality of what will be. When you accept reality without the loss of constant hope, God will bless you.
You will be able to get up again, although getting back to 100% may never fully come to be. However, remember it is your outlook on your circumstances that make them what they are. You can either let your challenges destroy you or make you all the more stronger.
Keep on persevering.
It may not seem like it now, but in the end, it will all be worth it. You will be a totally different person by the time 2017 rolls around. There will be a point where you will be able to look back and be joyful for your struggles; because no matter the financial, physical, or emotional cost, you couldn't be who you are today without all those trying challenges.
Keep on persevering.
It may not seem like it now, but in the end, it will all be worth it. You will be a totally different person by the time 2017 rolls around. There will be a point where you will be able to look back and be joyful for your struggles; because no matter the financial, physical, or emotional cost, you couldn't be who you are today without all those trying challenges.