Friends, it’s midterm. We have now reached the end of the first half of second semester. 🥳 We’re halfway through our halfway point of nursing school. I know it seems early for a celebration, and while I can’t speak for all of my classmates, I’m not going to sugar-coat it. I’m struggling. 🙃

I’ve had another rough week with my trigeminal neuralgia. I was hoping it was a migraine early Wednesday morning. {Yes, I was HOPING for a migraine. The lesser of two evils. 🙃} But, it wasn’t. So, I missed clinical this week. 😔 Instead, I spent most of the day in the dark, with my face on my heating pad, praying for any hint of relief. 😣

I’m a self-proclaimed control freak. 🙋🏻‍♀️ Thus, a disorder with its own agenda is extraordinarily difficult for me. 😒 Because, despite my best efforts, it is completely out of my control. And I don’t like that… at all. 😝 I take my neuro meds, keep a journal of suspected triggers to avoid, go to all my neuro appointments, get nerve blocks periodically injected into my face, volunteer for clinical trials and experimental studies, and everything else I feel like I can possibly do, but it still comes on with no warning whenever it chooses and remains as long as it sees fit. It no longer scares or depresses me like it used to. 🧐 Now it just… well, to be blunt, it kinda pisses me off. 🤷🏻‍♀️ But I digress.

As I said before, I’m struggling. Not like the usual “I got a 92 instead of a 98” perfectionist Kimmi nonsense that you guys get tired of trying to console me about. No, I’m legitimately struggling. 🥴 Like, teetering on the brink of disaster where a few slight missteps could derail way more than just my train of thought.🙈

“But Kimmi, you were doing so well, what happened?” Nothing really “happened” per se. But second semester is really intense. It’s a WHOLE LOT of information hermetically sealed in suspiciously small, seemingly innocuous packets, that when opened, triple or quadruple in size, like those compact emergency life rafts. With each meticulous segment building on the previous. 😲

An aside, one of the reasons I chose nursing also seems to be one of the things that is making the program incredibly difficult for me. 😬 The human body and its functions and processes fascinates me. I could dedicate entire semesters {or potentially years} to a single system or organ and its disorders, and not feel that I am doing it justice in completely understanding all that I need to know. 🤯 I guess that’s why people specialize. 🤓

This is a program of regular speed and length, but since nursing encompasses so much {and since I have a tendency to fixate 🤐}, even this normal, general nursing program often feels accelerated and just as I’m finding my rhythm, it’s time to progress. It’s almost maddening. 🤪

At any rate, I pAsSeD my third exam yesterday. 🥳 Still, I was pretty bummed that I didn’t perform better. 🥺 Because I studied every chance I got. Over the last couple weeks, I lived and breathed {obsessed over?} the cardiac system. Even with my uncooperative facial nerves, I watched videos, made concept maps, read and re-read the textbook and PowerPoints, used flash cards, apps, and my study guide, and took practice quizzes. 👊🏻

When I walked in to take the exam, I was actually feeling fairly confident. Which is a strange feeling for me and I wasn’t exactly sure what it meant. 👀 I also knew I had a small insurance policy at the end of the exam. Because we haven’t reached the point where we can’t go back to questions yet. 😏 So, I had flagged like 8-10 questions I had wrestled with and eventually changed {because I still don’t trust myself 🙃}, but wanted to revisit after the last question. 🤓

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize the last question was the LAST QUESTION. 😭 So, thinking I was clicking ’next’ I hit ‘Submit’. 😨 Annnnd that was the end of that. I felt my soul leave my body. 💀 Have you ever realized you sent a text or an email to the wrong recipient at the exact moment you hit send? It was like that. 😭 I knew what happened immediately, but it was too late. My answers were final and they belonged to the interwebs, even the ones that I somehow talked myself into that were once good, strong answers, but now made absolutely no sense, needed further review, and should frankly just die by fire. 🔥 🔥 🔥

I must have sat there for another 5 minutes, mean mugging the computer, trying to intimidate it into returning my absconded exam. 🤣 Spoiler: It had the audacity to be undeterred. 😝

I finally admitted defeat and reviewed my results. 🥺 It wasn’t awful. But it wasn’t stellar, either. As per the uje, I should have left well enough alone. 🙄 The answers I changed and wanted to change back? They would have been right. 🤦🏻‍♀️ Because, of course they would’ve. Why am I always in my own way? 😐 Oh well. Here’s to better choices in the future. 🥂

Incidentally, does anyone happen to know if those fancy shock collars can be programmed to train specific behaviors out of human beings? 🤔 If so, would that be a thing one could wear to sit for the NCLEX? Asking for a friend. 🙈

Confession time: I know you guys probably thought I abandoned my blog and fell further into obscurity, introversion, and senility, as nursing school trampled me to death. 🤪 Although those things are technically not NOT true, 👀 the truth is, I didn’t post about my last exam because it was an embarrassment to me, my class, and the nursing community, as a whole. 😱 Okay, maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but it was pretty ugly. 🙈 Was it the worst grade ever? No. But it was MY worst. 😩 And don’t give me any of that “You’ll get ‘em next time. It’s only a single test. That was a learning opportunity.” crap. 😒

I appreciate the sentiment, honestly I do. 😘 But you have to understand how devastating it feels to devote so much energy and time to studying, only to find yourself rubbing your temples, drawing blank after blank, and guessing at numerous answers, while simultaneously contemplating whether some nursing credits might have any impact on the starting salary of a circus clown in today’s economy. 🤡 {Clowns really freak me out, so this is possibly the truest sign of desperation.😱}

Now, I can already hear you guys. “But if you studied, why all the guessing?” 🤔 Well, it turns out that I focused on ALL the wrong details. 🤦🏻‍♀️ Details our instructor explicitly cautioned against. 🤨 {Why am I like this?🤓} #TrustIssues

Today, I took another exam. 😬 And it was like night and day. 😲 I knew the material. No guesswork, no temple rubbing, no ‘eenie meenie miney mo,’ I actually KNEW stuff. 🤩 The things I got wrong were weird judgment calls that were right, but “not the most right” ☝🏻 and careless errors when I misread the question. 🤪 #ReadingIsFundamentalKids

While I didn’t ace it, my score drastically improved over the last exam… by aLmOsT an entire letter grade. 😃 Since I didn’t ace the exam, this might not seem especially impressive, but I feel pretty good about it. 😌

I attribute improvement to a few things. Number one: (This is a pro tip; write it down) 👉🏻 FIRST EXAMS SUCK! 😂 Seriously. 😏 You don’t know what to expect, how to prepare, or where to focus your efforts. 😳 And if you’ve had strange experience with former instructors in previous semesters, 👀 you may or may not even be sure you can trust your current instructors’ study tips, advice, or exam blueprints. 🙃

So, the first thing that helped {sometimes the ONLY thing that can help} was just taking the exam, finding out all the unknowns and learning that these instructors are actually incredibly helpful, supportive, and trustworthy. 🙌🏻 🥳

The only other thing I’ve done, and I don’t want to get all sales pitchy, but a friend turned me onto the first website I’ve found that my mushy brain really gravitates toward. 🧠 Yay for quirky mnemonics corny videos, and super vibrant study guides. 🥰

Now, if I can just stop getting things right, but not the most right ☝🏻 and actually READ THE QUESTIONS, I’ll be unstoppable! 😝