Finals
Well, it's over. I just finished my last final about 30 minutes ago, and am now officially in the waiting-to-find-out-if-I-get-into-nursing-school phase. Funny thing though, I still don't feel that much relief. Guess I'm waiting till final grades come out, then I can take a deep breath.
Over the past two weeks I've been talking with "older" students like me in my study groups who agree that this time around in school is harder, and more stressful. We came to the conclusion that it's because now we've got more to lose.
We're missing out on work, when we could be paying down our bills. We're postponing having kids by a couple more years, and we're adding stress to our significant others by requiring more from them...like making dinner all the time, and chipping in extra for the movies, etc.
For my undergrad classes, I was a pretty good student and didn't worry too much about grades. If I got a tough teacher and a hard class, no big deal--sooner or later an easier class would come along and I'd boost my GPA with it. But this time around, it feels like every class counts. Getting into nursing school is SO competitive that certain schools won't even look at you if you have less than a 3.5 GPA, and the students who get in usually have GPA's much higher than that. This means that EVERY class, and every grade, and every test, and ultimately every question on a quiz counts directly toward your immediate future. All that added up equals major, major stress that I've never experienced before in school. I used to like school! I had near perfect attendance in elementary school, and had a 4.0 in high school. I actually liked taking tests. They were kinda fun, and a break from the regular day.
But this time around, I was stressed like crazy. I even had test anxiety for the first time--during an exam my mind would wander to odd things like the condition of my fingernails, or whether or not I really had to go pee. Then I'd realize a few minutes had passed and I was still trying to figure out what a question said. I think I gained 5 pounds in the last 2 weeks alone, and am surprised my face isn't completely melted off from the stress hormones seeping out my pores and causing acne at age 28!
But, I did learn a heck of a lot in the past 3 months. The curriculum, of course, but I also learned (again) that school grading is pretty arbitrary. There's a certain percent of grading that is realistic, but there's also a lot of room for instructor interpretation. For example, in statistics, my final grade is an 89.65. Will my teacher round it up to 90 for an A? Probably not. He IS a statistics teacher, but the syllabus clearly indicates that a 90-100 is an A, and 80-89 is a B. He's not the type to grade on a curve, either.
Then, in anthropology, my teacher throws out these tests that have nothing to do with his lecture or reading material, forcing him to grade on a HUGE curve, and assigning bonus points for material he "finds interesting" in our short answers. He told us he'll bump us up to the next grade if he thinks we deserve it.
In microbiology, the tests are so disjointed from what we learn in class that it prompted gatherings in the hallways after every test with students scratching their heads and cursing Prof. Mirkes's name.
Then again, I got through it all with a B average, maybe better, which is interesting, because I'm pretty much a B student no matter what. So maybe after all there is something with grading. Maybe an A student has something that I lack. Maybe it's the willingness to argue with the teacher after every test, which I watched many people do, and perhaps I should have done. Maybe it's some brain capacity to foresee the outrageous questions on the test...like the one asking for 2 symptoms of cutaneous Anthrax, when I clearly only have one symptom in my notes. Maybe they are just smarter, luckier, better students, whatever. I know that I tried my best, and I guess that's all I've got!
Over the past two weeks I've been talking with "older" students like me in my study groups who agree that this time around in school is harder, and more stressful. We came to the conclusion that it's because now we've got more to lose.
We're missing out on work, when we could be paying down our bills. We're postponing having kids by a couple more years, and we're adding stress to our significant others by requiring more from them...like making dinner all the time, and chipping in extra for the movies, etc.
For my undergrad classes, I was a pretty good student and didn't worry too much about grades. If I got a tough teacher and a hard class, no big deal--sooner or later an easier class would come along and I'd boost my GPA with it. But this time around, it feels like every class counts. Getting into nursing school is SO competitive that certain schools won't even look at you if you have less than a 3.5 GPA, and the students who get in usually have GPA's much higher than that. This means that EVERY class, and every grade, and every test, and ultimately every question on a quiz counts directly toward your immediate future. All that added up equals major, major stress that I've never experienced before in school. I used to like school! I had near perfect attendance in elementary school, and had a 4.0 in high school. I actually liked taking tests. They were kinda fun, and a break from the regular day.
But this time around, I was stressed like crazy. I even had test anxiety for the first time--during an exam my mind would wander to odd things like the condition of my fingernails, or whether or not I really had to go pee. Then I'd realize a few minutes had passed and I was still trying to figure out what a question said. I think I gained 5 pounds in the last 2 weeks alone, and am surprised my face isn't completely melted off from the stress hormones seeping out my pores and causing acne at age 28!
But, I did learn a heck of a lot in the past 3 months. The curriculum, of course, but I also learned (again) that school grading is pretty arbitrary. There's a certain percent of grading that is realistic, but there's also a lot of room for instructor interpretation. For example, in statistics, my final grade is an 89.65. Will my teacher round it up to 90 for an A? Probably not. He IS a statistics teacher, but the syllabus clearly indicates that a 90-100 is an A, and 80-89 is a B. He's not the type to grade on a curve, either.
Then, in anthropology, my teacher throws out these tests that have nothing to do with his lecture or reading material, forcing him to grade on a HUGE curve, and assigning bonus points for material he "finds interesting" in our short answers. He told us he'll bump us up to the next grade if he thinks we deserve it.
In microbiology, the tests are so disjointed from what we learn in class that it prompted gatherings in the hallways after every test with students scratching their heads and cursing Prof. Mirkes's name.
Then again, I got through it all with a B average, maybe better, which is interesting, because I'm pretty much a B student no matter what. So maybe after all there is something with grading. Maybe an A student has something that I lack. Maybe it's the willingness to argue with the teacher after every test, which I watched many people do, and perhaps I should have done. Maybe it's some brain capacity to foresee the outrageous questions on the test...like the one asking for 2 symptoms of cutaneous Anthrax, when I clearly only have one symptom in my notes. Maybe they are just smarter, luckier, better students, whatever. I know that I tried my best, and I guess that's all I've got!
Comments