I can’t believe this is the last homework assignment of my last class of nursing school. It’s so bittersweet to think that we are finally at the end. I’m more than ready to be an RN and start my nursing journey, but on the other hand, it’s so weird to think that I won’t be with the people that I have come to think of as family for the last three years. When we were told at orientation that these three years would go by fast, I didn’t believe it. And even during it, I didn’t really believe it. But now that we’re here, at the end of the road, I realize that, as much that has happened with us, it has sped by. We went from being little babies to the big sibling ready to leave and enter the world. Crazy.

I feel that our knowledge shot up this semester in critical care. We learned a great deal when we started in patho, and we continued learning in pharmacology. I feel like everything since that was based on those initial building blocks. However, this semester was where we really got to put everything into place as it was our pinnacle class. So much of what we learned was based on topics we were already knowledgeable in, and this was so beneficial to us in learning the more complicated aspects of critical care. This semester, to me, I really felt like a nurse as I took care of patients. There was much less reliance on a nurse or clinical instructor as we really took the reigns and pulled out all that we have learned in these past three years.

Additionally, it took me a while to adjust to this blogging aspect. I have run a blog in the past (now that I think about it, I wonder what happened to that blog?), but this is a new format that my previous host. And while I feel like blogging is a lot like writing a discussion board, I do find this more enjoyable than discussion boards. However, on the flip side, I wish that this would have been introduced to us sooner than our last semester. It felt like, at the beginning, we’re trying to adjust to everything that the final semester was throwing at us (graduation, job applications, critical care, NCLEX) while also finishing up our papers for Ireland, and then learning a whole new technological platform was added on top of that. It was stressful at first because of that, and I wish we had more time to work with it. I would’ve loved to have used it to it’s full potential, and I had grand pipe dreams of making this site into a virtual CV, but I didn’t want to spend all the time on it if we weren’t going to get to use it after graduation.

Overall, I think this course utilized greatly diverse learning methods which benefitted us greatly. I enjoyed the lectures with powerpoints, but I also enjoyed watching videos and acting out scenarios. I feel that, when we utilize more than one part of our brains, we really do experience greater learning that will benefit us in the long run.

So here’s the close-out to the last piece of homework. It’s been a great three years, and I’m going to miss everyone. Now, here’s on to the next big journey!