They are bound by flesh
as leather around a Bible.
That they dance and write
in air the story
of what is lost, what is gained.

That they are soldiers
cut and bleeding, a link
to the heart’s kingdom.
That they are so beautiful
a moon has landed on each finger.

That they are trained
for harps and hired for murder.
That the cuticles are shaped
like soft horseshoes.
They contain rivers.

That the ring finger’s shyness
suffers when gripped by the powerful.
That the palm yields to blisters
and wears the calloused rags
of repetition.

That they are mythical
with their lifeline’s hieroglyphics.
That they struggle
because of their great strength.
They are able to heal themselves.

That they know what it means
to draw the water
and work without pay.
That they will hide our eyes
and pray for our sins.

That they may life the hammer
and lead our bodies to grace.
That they will make a print
like no other
until they wave goodbye.

~ Jeanne Bryner, nurse poet

printed in The Poetry of Nursing 

it expresses perfectly the awe I feel about becoming a nurse.

this is most definitely a theme with me. I wonder if it is fear and shake my head no. I wonder if it’s regret and again get a no. It’s pure and simple awe.

i get so jazzed over being good to people and solving their small and not-so-small problems. i want to do it more. and i want to solve bigger problems. i know i can.

in my mind’s eye, i am just me. i’m sure you see yourself, your passion and creativity and drive as just you.

yet when i look at you, I see amazing possibility. and here on this side of the coin, i see much lacking.

That was my evaluation of myself upon ending my first clinical rotation: understands people, needs more confidence.

But I was given the chance to interact with a deaf client, for the very first time outside of those i know in class. I think that was the best part of my time in gerontology. Communication, belonging, i felt a part of her community even though i was so new and faltering and still asking her to sign things slower or repeat them. I love community and team and teaching. I had to teach too! Because of my PSW experience, I was given the opportunity to mentor a fellow student. And then there are the days I’m absolutely certain that I could teach said class better than the already awesome teacher standing before me.

My dreams are scaring the crap out of me. And I can’t wait to rush right into them.

the above initials will identify me when i work in clinical placements this semester. I am, wait for it… student nurse, first year.

thrilling. terrifying. I feel as though I need a super hero cape.

baby bath, temperature, parental education.

therapeutic interactions, tub baths, conflict management, and quality of life.

the language i speak now is significantly altered than the one I spoke eight months ago. AND i actually have to speak – WITH my VOICE – to my patients. coming from PSW/nurse’s aid work in a bilingual hearing and deaf environment, using my voice felt pretty awkward that first day.

but I’ve digressed. initials. behind my name.

It only seems fitting that there is some designation behind my name to explain the breadth of information I digest daily and how annoying I can be to working PSWs who have a much smaller crunch time to get things done.

I’m really trying hard to not get discouraged by the eye rolls sent my direction, the varied ways I have been told “why aren’t you working faster,” the many naysayers who say that nurses are the grunt workers of the healthcare system, and the very sad story of Amanda Trujillo.

I want to be positive, I want to change things. I’m a mature student, but still very much an idealist. And when I see nurses having moved up into management positions, I wish I had the guts to say to them: have you made a difference? or have you simply filled the shoes of the one before and done good enough?

Perhaps it’s the amazing nursing program I am in, but my eyes seems even further open than they’ve ever been. There is so much to do, and I am more anxious than ever to do it.

I am immensely proud of my SN1.

Here are my ideas of meals so far.

1. Pan-fried fish, mashed potatoes and green beans

(leaving in fish for now…)

2. Asparagus & Chickpeas over Rice

3. Guacamole Omelets & hashbrowns

4. Salmon Pasta

5. Fresh Tomato Soup & Grilled Cheese

and that’s where my ideas end, picking from among our favourite meals. Do you have any ideas to share? I’m looking for kid-friendly and non-mushroom.

Back to studying for finals!

p.s. I was surprised also at how few vegetarian recipes I use. Scary. I have a handful of bean recipes that we love but they all have to do with ham or pork or sausage or pork sausage. lol

Only, look how tiny they were! I was beginning to think I should have bought three in order to fill in the space. Wow, was I wrong! Because…

I took this picture TODAY! Sorry about all the curly brown leaves mixed in, but oh my gosh! They’ve taken over my little crescent moon garden!

What do I do next year? Leave them? Take divisions? Any ideas?

Some days I am scared about the role I am being handed, about the role I have asked to be given.
Some days I embrace it and know in it hides all the amazing sides of myself I’ve yet to discover, in it I will find my life’s work.
Just turning it over in my imagination, I feel bubbling over excitement, creativity and wonder.
For now they’ve yet to tie the ribbon and release it’s weight.

One day I will be… a nurse.

- Robert Frost

I’ve been working on incorporating physical activity into my life. I’ve noticed for a long while that I simply feel better when I exercise. And so I stumbled into what I thought was the ingenious idea of simply exercising for the lift in my mood rather than for any fitness gain.

Turns out however that these two pretty smart guys thought of it before me. I read their little 200 page book on the subject over the past two days. I was hooked like it was a fantasy novel! The name of the book is Exercise for Mood and Anxiety: Proven Strategies for Overcoming Depression and Enhancing Well-being by Michael Otto and Jasper Smits. It is above and beyond your ordinary self-help exercise book. This book really is gold. Their advice is built upon personal experience, clinical work, teaching – both Ph.D.’s of psychology – and scientific research, lots and lots of scientific research.

I read it for personal knowledge and well-being, but the book is so immersed in up-to-date research that I’ve used it extensively in a project this semester. Here is one of favourite passages. The author is reflecting on the joy of moments when out exercising, referencing the above poem by Robert Frost. I was startled and delighted to hear my own experiences in his words. Excellent book for anyone needing a mood lift or struggling with depression or anxiety.

“… exercise gives you a chance to enjoy sensations for sensation’s sake. The feel of a breeze against your skin while running deserves to be noticed and enjoyed mindfully. Likewise, the feel of water on your body and the sounds of your breathing deserve mindful attention while swimming. Outdoor activities put you in closer contact with the environment and the seasons that you might otherwise be: the feel of light rain, the shift in scents as autumn comes, the difference between your cold face and warm body in winter, and the first springtime experience that nature’s first green really is gold.”

but margaret atwood has a new book! early early in the semester her novel Alias Grace had me in its grips and it was a fight between finishing it and homework. i adore her storytelling and amazing mind. oh it only further proves that i must re-watch Blade-Runner soon.

and she reads comics like i do!!!

in her latest interview on George Tonight, she says Canadians are currently the Hobbits of the world and that the U.S. economic climate is akin to the one that preceded the extremely bloody French revolution. smart lady, what thoughts. scary thoughts. deep.

Now I do realize that everyone is different. We have our own systems and modus operandi, so I won’t say that these are for everyone. Personally I use them, they keep me sane. You may not realize you are in need of them, so here’s my story.

Way back in the dinosaur ages, I was in college in Louisiana. We didn’t have email addresses, we didn’t turn in papers electronically to check for plagiarism and we did our research leafing through actual books. In the same vein, I wrote to-do lists for homework, papers, assignments, readings and projects. Actually wrote them, with a pencil. Problem was that I had to continually rewrite them as I completed things. My name is Adrienne, and I killed some trees. Sorry. On the positive side, I was always reminded of what I needed to accomplish.

I started out this semester – I won’t tell you how many years later – the same way. But then the written to-do list got lost multiple times, was in the wrong binder that was not at school with me even more times and just… felt… wrong, palpably, as I went about my cell-phone wifi connected day.

So, I found an app for that. It’s called myHomework and there is an iPod *and* Android version. It’s accessible online from their web-app and on your smartphone. Oddly enough I primarily use the web-app. I find that interface faster to put in assignments and I work really hard to put readings in all at once, at least a week in advance.  When you’ve completed something, I can check it off and gleefully see the reward of the strike-through on the words of that item, bypassing the obsessive compulsive urge I have to rewrite an entire list because I finished one of twenty items.

So remember, SMART goals and try myHomework.

Also, college is powerpoints and papers these days. Lecture notes are sure not what they used to be. Neither is research. I have pdfs piling up already! Thank goodness for Dropbox because it makes my life much easier to manage.

Dropbox is a software that you install on your main computer/laptop at home. The Dropfox folder then becomes part of your computer’s file system. All my school work is saved into the Dropbox folder.

So, that’s not too exciting. But this is! I can access all my files from school by signing into the Dropbox website. I can access all my files on my ipod Touch. And best of all, they are kept synced for me. Changes I made to one file at school or files I added at school are synced up to my account once I am home without me having to think at all!

Your storage space is limited but there are ways to increase your limit without having to pay. But I think that the amount of space you get free is pretty generous. I have personal files in there plus my school stuff and am not at 50%. Worst comes to worst later, when my account gets full, I’ll only leave my work for the current semester.

Now you know all my bestest secrets. Here’s wishing everyone an organized and successful semester!

p.s. Dropbox is great, but back it up.

It was one of five workshops available at a conference I was attending, and since going overseas to study/work isn’t a possibility and my facebook account is pretty locked down already, the only chance that I was there to learn something and not completely waste my time was with the learning strategist.

She was so good and taught me so much that I am here, duty bound to tell you on Sunday afternoon, share and divulge my secrets rather than horde them on this countdown to midterm weekend.

I thought I have great study habits. Guess who failed her little “how well do you study?” quiz? Yeap.

I’m nothing if not dedicated. Her presentation however was focused on efficiency and she showed me a few nifty tricks.

• Make a list of what you need to know. This is especially important if your teacher doesn’t give you any kind of review before an exam. She recommended showing it to your teacher and asking if it was comprehensive. In her experience, if the teacher did point out something that was missing, it was usually a crucial concept and on the exam.
• Summarize the book and what you need to know between your in-class notes and maybe through home notes, but put the textbook away after that. She says textbooks are too overwhelming. I heart my own, so I was 100% with her on this, but for those less bibliophilic than myself, I can understand it totally.
• Divide what you need to know into three piles.Think of a stoplight – red, green, yellow. She told us that research shows that we study what we already know (!) most. Apparently, we like the good feeling and positive reinforcement so much that we stick with it. Her advice? Put the stuff you know in the “green” pile and only bother reviewing it after a thorough going over of everything else. The yellow pile is for what you sort of know, and of course the red pile is what you do not at all know. Study the red pile first and most. Then hit the yellow. And later review the green.
• Here’s another statistic I had never heard. We remember 5% of what we hear audibly, 10% of what we read and a whooping 90% of what we teach. Go find a study group and teach ‘em something, man. Wow.
• Make up questions from the bold terms and headings in your texbook. She said this partly falls into the “How to take a test well” category because how well we do on a test is not necessarily a reflection of what we know. It IS a reflection of how well we study. And if you are always studying with the question AND answer sitting there staring at you, your brain will totally freak out on you when test time comes and ONLY the question is there.
• Another test-taking tip: cover up the answers of multiple choice questions as you move through them. Those answers are meant to confuse, as we all know only too well. Removing them from the picture allows your brain to recall the information without that distraction and you can proceed to picking a, b, c, d with much more confidence.
• My favourite variation of that advice was this keen idea: cover up those beloved power point slide formatted notes with post-it notes. Write the question on the post-it note, the answer is underneath, and voila! instant test question to quiz yourself or friends. I’ve been doing this as I go through my anatomy today and it’s a whole new world!
  
• Most shocking and revelational to me was the evidence-informed practice (lol) of how soon after a lecture you should be reviewing the material covered. Take a guess..
• Pretty picture break while you think.
• 
• 12-24 hours!!! no seriously, she says it’s proven that one of the best ways to move information from the short term memory into the long term is to review it within one day of the lecture. Obviously, I can’t do that now as I sit and prepare for midterms, but I am going to attempt to do this once we are back into the lecture cycle again. Her advice was not to take too long. A quick review… maybe ten minutes.
• Then the next step for memory retention is to spend an hour at the end of the week reviewing that week’s material. This I already sort of do, but I am going to work on improving.

Please know that this was not all of her advice, but only what stuck out as perfect for me, my life, habits, needs. I would highly recommend seeing a learning strategist yourself. They have so much to offer you.

Good luck on your exams!