School Me Saturday 8/19/23- fall semester begins, my personal report

I know, I know. I usually do my personal report on the first Saturday of the month where I write about my personal school journey and the trials and successes therein.

But.

Spring semester ended at the end of April for me. I did TA over the summer and supported students on their RN-BSN journey. I learned a lot, mostly about myself and how I should approach assignments.

No more Last Minute Lucy for me!

(I hope)

There aren’t enough assignments for that.

The first and only in-person class was yesterday. 97 miles roundtrip.

It was a very long day.

This semester I am taking three courses.

1. Advanced Health Policies and Ethics
2. Quantitative Research in Nursing
3. Health Disparities/Outcomes

The first two are synchronous. This means that class is held virtually, every week, and we the students are expected to attend and engage with the professor and the other students.

With this cohort, I don’t think that will be a problem.

The last class is asynchronous only. This means that we will be learning at our own speed, doing the readings and papers, watching the video lectures. In short, how I got through my BSN and MSN. This is very familiar to me. My hope is that knowing my classmates so well in the Health Disparities/Outcomes class will lead to robust debate and discussion in the Discussion assignments. There is nothing worse than writing a Discussion post and no one responds. I have hope with this group.

It is the usual fare for all three: presentations, discussion boards, and the like.

I am also doing the research assisting thing. I have a new PhD nurse that I will be assisting. I hope this year is more engaging than last year. I’ve already started this. I will be driving up every Monday to do the assisting thing.

Outside of university, I am forever doing CEU hours to maintain my CNOR. There was an opportunity that arose last week to do a multi-week CEU on Writing for Publication. This is specifically about nursing and the operating room and what I can see myself doing at the end of my PhD. I will be doing this as well. My justification is that I no longer have to drive the 97 mile round-trip to the university every other Friday. This is on the lowest priority rung. I will not be getting graded; I just hope to learn more about writing for publication.

The beginning of the semester is always full of hope. Let’s hope it continues!