Sarah's blog
Class of 2011, Nursing Major, from Wrightstown, WI

Hi Everyone!

Hope you guys all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday with your family and friends! I know mine was a very welcomed break from school (and of course an excuss to eat astronomical amounts of turkey and pumpkin pie)! I speant most of my time off visiting with friends and family who I have in a way "lost touch with" since I have been away at school (I have found that I get so wrapped in my homework and I don't really have a lot of time do to other things). One really big surprise was my uncle and aunt flew up from Florida for the holiday to have Thanksgiving dinner with us. Their youngest son, Brayden, is my godchild and I haven't seen him since last October when I flew down to St. Augustien to visit. So it was nice to have the "whole" family there to celebrate the holiday with.

Well, and of course I decided I was not going to do any of my homework over the break and then on Sunday night I was not the most pleasant person to be around. I had so much that I had to get done, and lets just say my patience level was not where it normally is. But that was my fault for being a procrastinator, and believe me I payed for it on Monday when I had quite a bit of reading to catch up on, especially for my chemistry class! Oh well, things did work out for the better and now I am once again ahead of the game, which is exactly where I like to be.

This coming weekend is going to be somewhat hectic! Today I have to work until 5:30. I actually work at the Cerebal Palsy Center right here in Green Bay where I am a lifeguard and a water safety instructor (all that means is I teach swimming lessons) and I also work with many special needs children and adults. So there goes my Friday! Then tomorrow morning I have to babysit at 6:30 and I will be doing that until about 2:00. And then I have to get up and go to church with my mother to help get things ready for the Advent By Candle Light which is going on tomorrow night! So once again, there goes another day out of my weekend. Then finally on Sunday I have to go to church in the morning, and then for the rest of the day I have to write a reaction paper to William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and also study for my biology exam which is on Monday! Plus in two weeks we have our final exams to take, so I have to start preparing for those! So yeah, I really don't have much free time in my schedule for this coming weekend, but oh well!

Alright, well I have to run! Hope you have a great weekend and talk to you soon!

Hi Guys!

So alot has happened to me since the last time I wrote anything. First of all, my Godson was born, so I am really excited about that! He was born on Friday, November 2 at Bellin Hospital right here in Green Bay. He was two days late and still only weighed 6 pounds 2 ounces and was 17 inches long. So yeah, he was a very, very tiny baby! But nevertheless he was absolutely adorable:) This past weekend we had a babyshower for my aunt and Bodan is still so tiny, but is healthy as can be.

I ended up doing extremely well on all the exams I told you about last time. This week was crazy just as that last week had been! Within the first three days of the week,I had two papers due plus I had two exams to take. On Monday I had my English source paper due. What we had to do was write a review on a movie that either interested us or we disliked strongly. In our review, we had to incorporate the opinions of three other movie critics to either support our thesis or to argue against our thesis. So therefore, we had to use the MLA citing process, which I really don't enjoy using and would rather use APA anyday! I chose to do Disney's movie "Miracle" which is the movie about the hockey team and their victory in the 1980 winter Olympics against the Soviet Union. I love the movie, and really enjoyed writing the paper.

Then on Monday I also had a huge biology exam on heredity. It wasn't all that bad and yesterday when we got back our exams I did fairly well on it, so I can't really complain. Tuesday, however, I think caused me to develop some premature grey hairs because it stressed me out soooo much! We had a HUGE organic chemistry test in my chemistry class! The material was so incredibly difficult that I had to spend a minimum of 10 hours studying for that test and even then I had the gut feeling that I wasn't going to be prepared enough for the exam! Well, I found myself sitting in class on Tuesday morning taking the exam and things went okay. Yesterday when we got back our exams, I didn't do bad at all, and actually I was quite surprised. Lesson 101: always study for exams! Half of the people in my class got 30-40%'s...yeah, I know what you're thinking. Somedays it really does suck, but study as much as you can because it truly will one day pay off!

Wednesday classes were canceled for the St. Norbert students because it was an academic advising day. These are days when students meet with their advisor's on campus to discuss the classes they are going to register to take for next semester. Well, us Bellin College of Nursing students didn't get the luxury of being off for the entire day like the SNC students did. Instead, we had to be at our nursing class at 8:30, just like every other Wednesday of the week. Also that day, we had our nursing philosophy paper due. This was a paper which described all of the reasons why we chose to pursue a career in nursing. Also included in the paper had to be our definitions of caring, excellence, community, and integrity. The paper had to be a minimum of 6 pages typed, and we also had to use three different references which we had to cite within our paper in APA style. The paper itself was not all that difficult to write, however the difficult part was simply getting started with an introduction. This was a very personal paper, and everyone wanted their's to be perfect, so sometimes it was difficult to find the correct word choice to use to get a specific point across. Mine ended up being 9 pages long, and it took be a total of 6 hours to complete. I sat down at 2:30 on a Thursday afternoon, and didn't get done until 8:30 that night. So it was a long time, and a long process of thinking, but in the end I was satisfied with my work!

Now I must run; today I have to be to school a little early because I have two people shadowing me, and I have to pick them up in 15 minutes. So as you can see, the life around here has been so incredibly busy and all of us are ready for Thanksgiving break to come! So HIP HIP HOORAY FOR TURKEY DAY!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving:)
Sarah