Thursday, August 13, 2009

just out of curiosity

As I head into my second year of nursing school I have many questions about this year floating around in the abyss that is my mind. What books do we need to bring with us the first day of class? We are scheduled from 9-12, 12-3 on Mondays, will there be a lunch break? Prior to Spring semester's end there was word that some of us would need to go to a different hospital for clinicals. It's about an hour away from where I live. When will we know who is assigned to which hospital? Will we be able to acquire syllabi prior to the beginning of classes? Will we be given any instruction whatsoever prior to showing up bright and early on the 24th???

This is the answer I received: (copied and pasted)

KLS,

Slow down...take a breath...I have posted the syllabi on Blackboard. We'll
talk about it all on Mon the 24th. Enjoy the rest of your summer break!


Signed,
Your Instructor*


Personally if there isn't a second year orientation, I would at least send out a packet of information (either by snail mail or email) that would provide us answers to our questions. I know I'm not the only one inquiring.

By the way, the syllabi being loaded onto Blackboard is only helpful, when the class is opened on Blackboard.

So, I am wondering what your nursing program did, or is doing, to prepare you for your second year? Are you jumping in (did you jump in) feeling somewhat naked and ignorant like me?

*real names not given

6 comments:

SummerAnytime said...

We don't get any information until about a week and a half before the first day. This used to make me nervous but I'm used to it now. We don't know what theory class we're in therefore we don't know the days or times for class. We also don't know what clinical group we're in so that means we don't know any of the locations, times, or days we will be in clinical. All up in the air! Crazy huh?

Azmomo2andcounting said...

Same questions here!!! EXACTLY!! I have no idea what is going on this semester except, that I need to be there on the 18th at 12 & classes are in the worst building possible! Of course Blackboard has last Spring's courses still loaded onto it.

Jami said...

This is my first year, so I'm not sure how different the second year will be for me, but this is how they did it for us so far.

In June we had an orientation. They gave us our schedule for Fall quarter, which is a good thing because it is CHAOS. No day or week is the same. 9-12 one day, 8-3 another, 10-12 another, etc. The only regular schedule we have is clinicals. We got our clinical assignments--four clinical groups, three different hospitals.

Last week they emailed the syllabus and the "modules" for the first two weeks of school which included reading assignments and what to bring to class.

So I'm feeling pretty well informed so far... Just need to get going on the reading.

Lynn Dykstra said...

Dirty secret from a nursing instructor here--we don't always know what is going on either until the first day with students.
Rosters change, clinical sites cancel themselves at the last minute, it all is a mess that we try to clean up at the last minute.
Good luck-second year students are a lot of fun--we enjoy your mixture of knowledge and eagerness to learn at this level.

Order & Chaos said...

12 weeks--We do know the classes and times we're taking, so at least there's that!
Christine--Two of my summer classes have been taken off BB, but one is still up. Of the two that were taken off one was from a different school, and it's probably policy for them. The other was because the instructor was adamant about no late work being turned in.
June--The orientation before our 1st year didn't even give us half the info you received. It was basically a waste of time. We were supposed to have done finger-printing for our background checks, but because of scheduling conflicts we weren't able to. They did not provide us with an useful information.
LD--I am so excited that I received a comment from a nursing instructor! It does help to get feedback from "the other side", so to speak. I understand schedule changes and the like, but this non-information is par for my program, basically.

To give you some background here are links to my previous posts on the subject:
http://kalamityjane71.blogspot.com/2008/11/hit-with-proverbial-monkey-wrench.html
http://kalamityjane71.blogspot.com/2008/12/to-transfer-or-not-to-transfer.html
http://kalamityjane71.blogspot.com/2009/05/final-decision.html

Anonymous said...

I'm a second year student graduating in a few months. We are never told about our clinical placements until our first day of clinicals (which is always an orientation day). Sometimes the instructor will have the info on the first day of class but that is rare.

Our 2nd year is broken into 3, 5 week courses so we get to start all over every 5 weeks. Yippee.