This week is officially “dead week”. The week prior to finals when the sea of caffeine rises and random bits of papers with frantically written notes waft through the halls. Nerves are on edge and if you listen closely enough you can hear the mass quantities of math being calculated not for homework, but to figure out your “final buffer”. What can I get and still maintain my current grade or improve it? I kind of liken it to the “oh shit” bar in the shower in some hotels. It’s the just in case I panic and start panic erasing and changing my answers buffer. You need to know it.
I have one final left- Math.. I’m not looking forward to it but feel a lot better going into it with a high A. This is the last term of having to complete pre-requisites, with A’s. Don’t get me wrong, I always try for an A and that will never change. But it’s been drilled into our heads that if you want a shot at getting into the nursing program, you have to get A’s. They’ve recently changed this policy, which is a major point of contention for those of us that worked our tails off these past months to maintain our A average.
Rather than awarding the maximum amount of points for having say, only one or two B’s, the range is now 3.67 and above gets the maximum. So someone that has about six Bs will get awarded the same amount of points my study group and I will get for our A’s. I get leveling the playing field. I also agree that straight A’s does not guarantee a good nurse. To equate the two for program entry makes no sense to me.
Either way, I’m just relieved to have all of these classes done. The nursing program application will post on November 30th by 5:00 PM, at which point a frenzy of printing and calculating points will ensue. It’s an exciting time we’ve all been waiting for and that we all feel a little nauseous about. All the sacrifice, the time, the tears, and hard work are what brought us to this point and we all want to experience it together. Right now we are all full of hope.