Perfect Little Quirks

My freshman year of college was a somewhat of a reality check.

But in a good way.

I had grown up with these on-screen depictions of college as being very similar to high school.  All the cliques, mandatory fashion choices, and of course the drama associated with those.  I didn't really expect college to be much different, especially being I was going to a college the size of a mid-to-large high school (at least when compared to my graduating class of 53).

But what I found was very different.

Even though I found the whole college itself to have a diverse range of backgrounds and the subsequent different lifestyles, I could not have asked for a better wing.

(Disclaimer: I feel the need to quickly explain my focal point.  I grew up in the northern mid-west on a farm 25 miles from the nearest thing what most people would call a city.  I was surrounded by little, mid-west farm towns.  What most people would consider northern hick-towns if they met the high school students...  We were all the same.  There was no diversity in any sense of the word.  So my experience was probably a tad more extreme than most peoples.)

Anyway,  I was placed on a wing that was made up of girls who had previously lived in a much smaller dorm that was turned into a guys dorm.  In that dorm they had established an incredible culture of acceptance.  So much so that I didn't even believe it at first.  My thoughts were, "Sure, they accept everybody's quirks.  Probably about as much as Hollywood does."

So I was skeptic.  For awhile... I mean, there's no way you can actually get an entire wing of girls to be cool with everyone being, well, cool.

But I was dead wrong.

I soon saw some of the quirks :) But never heard the talk behind peoples backs, some (actually most) even joined right in.

It was such a relief to realize that these girls were genuine.  And its so awesome to see the real person behind the facade so many put up and to feel entirely free to be your weird self.

Because we're all weird, some of us just allow ourselves to have more fun in life than others do. :)

Thank you girls of 3rd East, for being your awesome, amazingly cool selves :)

Re-learning How to Learn

I have written briefly on this topic in a previous post which I will post a link to  at the bottom, but I want to write further about one of my biggest struggles this past year.  In fact, it was hands down my biggest.

Last summer as I packed to go to college I secretly thought that my biggest problems would be social ones.  As you have previously read, I'm shy.  An extrovert (which I didn't realize at the time), but I'm shy.  But I rarely allowed myself to think about those types of problems.  My defense mechanism is to entirely ignore and forget about future problems (especially social ones) until the situation is right in my face.  My life mantra has really become I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.  Which has seemingly helped but is entirely off topic for this post.  What actually became my biggest problem was having no idea how to study.

I don't have first hand experience with any other high school but mine, But I have heard time and time again that this is many student biggest struggles when they reach college.

I was a B/B- student in high school and studying was essentially non-existent in my life.  Not even my friends who had straight A's all through high school studied more than the night before a test.  It was incredibly easy to slide by.  Which I now will never forgive myself for doing, because my college offers basically guaranteed scholarships based on your GPA and ACT score.  If I had actually bothered to learn the material in high school I could have achieved close to a 4.0 and had a better ACT score which would saved me a lot of the debt grief I will now be going through... I basically threw away thousands upon thousands of dollars...

But again, slightly off topic.

Opening a textbook and sitting down to study was entirely new for me.  Recording lectures and actually reading a textbook was new for me.  Spending my free time in the library only began spring of my senior year when I got my preliminary "acceptance" letter from my first choice school saying that I was accepted for enrollment but only into the 5-year nursing track not the 4-year track, but that a .18 bump in my GPA would get me in.  I had less than two months to do that.  I sat in the library alone every morning and during every lunch and I sometime even went to the public library after the school library closed to continue studying or working on a paper.

I did it.  I sent in my final high school transcripts and the acceptance letter came.

But other than that studying was a foreign concept.  Once I got to college, I had to do a trial and error approach that lasted for far too long before I finally figured out what I had to do to pass.  Thankfully that was before I outright failed anything.

I eventually realized that I am a kinesthetic/tactile and visual learner.  I actually have to watch and follow what the professor is doing while he is saying it, just listening does nothing for me.  I also discovered that the dreaded, horrible, make-your-life-miserable "mind-maps" that my physiology prof was so fond of actually made things light-years easier when I finally caught on.

The best tip I have if you are both a tactile and visual learner is when learning vocabulary or a concept is to use the acronym system (or lists) or visualize something really funny that sounds close to the word or helps you to remember another section of material.  I especially like the acronyms for anatomy and physiology because they allow you to remember large amounts of information in a certain order and its much less likely that you will make a simple mistake such as listing something in the wrong place or out of order.  And as a quick side note: please, please, PLEASE, for your own good... do not ever stick with a way of studying that is not working just because you are too lazy/stubborn to find/learn a new way.  Yes, that was another of my mistakes...

Find out what kind of learner you are and make the needed adjustments, you will thank yourself later.  I would even go as far as to say that no two people will have the same optimal study strategy.  My roommate and myself: polar opposite study habits.  I study flashcards, do the readings, watch YouTube videos, and review day in day out.  She browses the chapter and her notes two hours before a big test; we get the same grade...

Find your optimal study strategy and run with it!

This past year was crazy.  But in the end, the long hours paid off.  I wish all my fellow nursing/future nursing students good luck and I hope you are able to learn from my mistakes and excel in your studies.

Leave a comment below and let me know what your favorite method of hitting the books is!

Here is the link to my previous post where I touched on my study struggles: Sorting Through It All
   

I Am Not An Introvert

For at least a solid decade of my life I believed the lie that I was an introvert.  I let it define who I was and it held me back.

Now, let me clarify that being an introvert is not bad and it doesn't hold everyone back. Introverts, extroverts, and ambiverts are what make the world go round.  They each prefer to fill different necessary spots in this world that a person with another personality type would rather die if they had to do.  It's how we're made.

But, I tried to shove myself into a box I didn't belong in like a baby first trying to play with a shape sorter, I wasn't gonna fit.  I had labeled myself an introvert (and later an ambivert) and had adamantly argued that I was NOT shy.  I thought I was comfortable.


Well, I realize now that my first tip-off that I was certainly not an introvert was the fact that up until around 9th grade I had loved school... because I could hangout with friends, and I was ALWAYS friends with the new kids.  But at some point in early middle school I began to feel self-conscious just like every other preteen.  So naturally I got a little more shy, but then came the innocent sounding label: Quiet.  And I believed it.  I believed that I wasn't the spontaneous, talkative girl who loves socializing.  Which is, in part, true.  I am shy.  But I am an extrovert.  Looking back now, despite the fact that I wasn't and still am not the most talkative unless you give me copious amounts of caffeine, in that case, watch out world!  I was always the last to leave any group event or gathering because I didn't want to miss out on anything fun that may still happen.  I have always been an adrenaline junkie :) and love trying new things and thrill seeking.  Definitely not qualities of your textbook introvert.

But, thanks to the wonderful and amazing girls on my dorm wing at college this past year, I gradually began to realize that I hated to close my door and I always wanted to go to dances and get fro-yo, and *GASP*  I even knocked on people's door to invite them to come swing dancing.  (Not to mention DRAGGED others there too because I was not going to miss it :) )  I was so much happier this year, not that I was depressed before, but I realized who I was thank to the amazing friends I've made this year, and that person may be shy (and I'm working on that) but loves to meet new people after the initial 'talking to a new person' terror is gone, loves to go on 12:30 AM doughnut runs to a packed bakery, and especially loves to go country west coast swing dancing! :)  Thank you to everyone who made this past year one of the best years of my life.

Yeah I should have had this figured out long ago :)  It seems pretty obvious now.  If you had a similar experience I would love to here about it!  Leave a comment below!
    

Here's the link to part 1 of this post: Sorting Through It All

Sorting Through It All

Before I turn my focus to the coming excitement of nursing school, I've decided to look back on the past two semesters which got me to the point at which I am now.

While the transition to the whole 'living on your own' aspect of college was easy, the transition to 'here's a paper and 2-4 tests every week' was not... at all.  In short, it kicked my butt.  I understand that to many of you that doesn't seem like very much, and I consider you lucky.  My high school left me entirely unprepared for the workload of college life.  It was incredibly easy to not even have to take homework home, you could just finish it in the morning before class.  And tests, who ever heard of studying before the morning of a test??

So that was an abrupt awakening.  And anyone who knows me, which I realize is probably none of you, knows that I agonize over what to write for a paper, it has to "feel" just right.  The flow of the sentences and the ideas has to perfectly express my thoughts.  Anything less just feels wrong, and for me just one out-of-place sentence can ruin how I feel about an entire paper.  It was commonplace for me to finish a paper (which I would also read to the class) at 4am the morning it was due and get up and go to my 745 class.

I also discovered that who reads your paper makes a difference too.  During my Academic Writing class in high school, my teacher and I didn't really appreciate the same writing styles and despite myself being a decent writer in the grammar and language departments, she dismissed most of my papers as "confusing..."  I will admit, in her defense, my organization wasn't top rate.
 But... then came college, where I finally found a professor that spoke my "language" you could say.

In this class, I made the discovery that how you read a paper in your head, with all the pauses and breaths and emphasis, drastically affects your opinion of the quality of the paper.  It could sound like a seven-year-old wrote it or it could sound like a beautiful piece of art.  Perspective is huge.  In this case, I was taking a first year class that was supposed to basically covered speaking and writing, but I had the luck of getting the best possible prof. in my opinion.  Our class still covered the main points of good speaking and writing, but he took the class so much deeper and while other sections were learning how to correctly use commas and speak at the proper speed we were analyzing how speech and language are powerful mediums, discovering that every opinion has value, and learning how to be a speaker who serves their audience instead of their own agendas.  Every day, class was so interesting and filled with profound ideas that made you think so hard.  It will honestly forever be my favorite class.  

Well this got to be far longer than I expected so I'm going to break it into two parts.  I will post part II, I Am Not An Introvert, within the next two days.  Thank you so much for taking the time to read these scrambled thoughts of mine!

Hasta Luego!

And So It Begins...

After two semesters of sweat, tears (believe me, I was crying on the inside before and after every Physiology test), and sleepless nights (also from Physiology... and Anatomy... and Chemistry); I have officially conquered the Nursing program prerequisites and have received the much anticipated acceptance letter!

I decided to start this blog to share my journey through the crazy maze of nursing school.  A journey that is sure to be full of ups and downs and interesting times!

I hope to continue to post throughout the summer as I prepare to begin my first real semester of Nursing school and then continue to post about my adventures throughout my time as a student.  Check back often!