1 Week Down, 15 to Go

I finished my first week of the RN program.

Longest. Week. Of. My. Life.

But so much fun, too. I'm really enjoying myself.

My schedule has me at school every day. I've never done that before, and it makes for a long week with all the commuting (20 miles each way). Oh, what this will cost me in gas! And I am trying to coordinate all the other areas of my life around this new schedule, which I was in the dark about until I showed up the first day. It's kind of tricky. Some days I can take the kids to school, others I cannot. Some days I can pick them up, others I cannot. Some days I'm home early, some late. And then there's getting all my piano students worked in there too.

Oh, and enormous amounts of reading and studying.

There are 60 of us in this program. We are the Class of 2013. We are together for the Nursing Fundamentals lecture class on Fridays, but other than that, we are broken into groups of ten for our clinical groups. I already feel like I have a new family in those 10 new friends, and many other new friends in the other groups.

Every day I came home dog tired. One day I thought pizza sounded like a fun way to end the week for dinner, but then I realized it was only Tuesday. Tuesday!

This week, besides all the introductory stuff about the program, we learned handwashing and aseptic techniques, and taking vital signs. I heard my first blood pressure this week, and I've been checking everyone in the house regularly for practice. We are told very seriously that this program is rigorous and will demand most of our lives for the next two years, but that we will be so grateful, and it will be so worth it.

I can already tell.