final reflection

1. Final Reflection on community goals
In the beginning of my first semester of college, I was told to set
three goals for myself. My three goals reflected academic, social,
and health aspects of my life. I have chosen to reflect on my first
goal: stay organized.
Throughout the first semester of my college experience, I
have struggled with my goal to stay organized. I began the
semester thinking I was prepared for what was ahead of me, but
I most certainly was not. I thought the most challenging thing
about college was going to be living away from my family and
friends, but that was put in the back of my mind once I was
bombarded with three chapters of information in anatomy, as well as, four chapters
in chemistry within the first week of classes. We went through everything I had
learned in one year of high school chemistry within the first two weeks of classes. I
found myself struggling to just keep up and process the information I was learning.
This experience made me feel lost. In high school,
I was always an A student with an occasional B in a few
classes. I always managed to stay organized. I had a table
of contents for my notebooks! During this semester I
was just happy to get a passing grade. Luckily, I wasn’t
alone because many other girls were struggling with the
course load as well. We were able to build a support
system to help each other manage.
The students of the class of
2018 are the Marcella Neioff School of Nursing’s guinea pigs. This
is the first year that the school has combined general, organic, and
biochemistry into one semester. (It used to be taken over the
course of two semesters.) I believe this curriculum change was not
a successful experiment. There was just way too much information
jammed into a short period of time. It is hard to stay organized
when the class is ill prepared. The nursing school also took BIOL
109 (general biology) out of the curriculum plan. This meant that
incoming freshman had to take BIOL 152 (Human Anatomy and
Physiology) their first semester with the current sophomores. Our
teacher would sometimes say “refer back to what you learned last
year in BIOL 109,” but the freshman didn’t have BIOL 109. The
combination of these two difficult classes in my first semester
made it very difficult to stay organized. I had papers all around my room and
jammed into my textbook. That was not how I usually organize my work. Despite
the many challenges of this semester, I have made many new friends in the nursing
program and we’ve become each other’s support system. We have a formed a bond
that no one outside of the program could understand.

2. I understand that as nursing students we have a lot to learn over the course
of four years. The Marcella Neioff School of Nursing did not intend to inflect so much
panic on the freshman class. These changes had to be tested on some class, it just
happened to be our class. I suggest in the future, that the school implement one, just
one, of the curriculum changes. Maybe the one semester of intense chemistry and
then the freshman take the general biology class. Or the freshman take the harder
anatomy classes, but still have chemistry spread out over two semesters.
This experience has taught me a lot about
life and myself. You don’t have to be the best, the
smartest, the most organized. You just have to
work hard, do your best, and believe in yourself.
That is how you will make it through and
accomplish anything. In September, I thought I
had made a huge mistake going into the nursing
program. I didn’t think I was going to make it
through this first semester, but I just kept going
to classes, and kept working hard. This semester reminds me of the song by Rodney
Atkins “If you’re Going Through Hell.” Basically the message is that if you’re going
through hell, just keep going because you will get out.
To be better prepared I went on pinterest and looked up some really good
tips from nursing students across the country. These tips have better prepared me
to stay organized for next semester. I have even found some tips for doing well on
nursing exams. Next semester I am going to stay organized from day one. By staying
on top of my schoolwork, I won’t get behind on my studies. In addition to carrying
over all three of my goals from fall semester to the
spring semester, I have also set a new goal for
myself. I must admit that this goal is ambitious, but
most goals are. That’s why they are called goals!
My goal for next semester is to get A’s in both of
my nursing classes: BIOL 153 and PSYC 304. For
right now, I am just going to implement those tips I
found on pintrest and try my best to do well on my
nursing finals.