I am most excited about potentially being able to work in the practice setting that I have been aligning my experiences with for the past two years. I feel like I have done a lot of prepatory work to build a resume of as much ICU experience as I could in order to from gain exposure to the ICU during preceptorship, as well as from my job at home at my local hospitals ICU during the summer. I am excited to learn to practice as a nurse in critical care and hopefully land a job in the ICU. I find how much I can learn in a day in the ICU to be so rewarding. I really enjoy working with the patient population and seeing my patients progress towards discharge, especially in small steps such as slight improvements in neurological exams or hemodynamic stability. I find the ICU one of the most interesting practice settings because the collaboration between different members of the healthcare team is so evident there, especially between other nurses, the respiratory therapists and providers.  I am also excited to hopefully earn a sustainable income that can allow me to be an independent member of society. I am excited to hopefully travel nurse one day to see more of the world and how critical care medicine is practiced in different areas of the country.

            I will celebrate by spending time with my family and friends, especially before I graduate, trying as hard as I can to maximize the last few months that I have with my friends from college. I am happy to celebrate my achievements but am also excited to celebrate the experiences of my college family.

            I am most anxious about finding the job that is the best fit for me, in the setting that I am looking for, and on a unit where the culture is promoting of learning, with a good amount of senior nurses left available to teach, as well as support new graduates. I am definitely nervous about the pandemic, especially after working as a CNA with many nurses who are burned out from working with COVID patients.

                        In order to study for NCLEX, I plan to work on my CAT exams and other ATI work for 3 hours each weekend, 2 hours on the day that I don’t have clinical, 1 and a half hours on the day that I do have clinical and whenever my transitions class is asynchronous. I hope that this is a sustainable amount of time in order to fit in my other studies as well as have decent work life balance. On the day I don’t have clinical, I will find a quiet area in the library on Biddeford campus to work, and on the days that I don’t or the weekend I plan to do the work in my quiet room at my house.

            I learned a lot about negatively worded questions that I should pay attention to when working on NCLEX preparation and the licensure exam. I hope to keep track of the questions that I struggle on and focus the majority of my studying on those. The modules stressed the importance of active learning, so while I’m studying lectures and making study guides, being conscious of the importance of what I am learning.