Last Post

I will start my last blog off with a quote that one of my professors used at the end of our lecture today. It is a saying by Marie Curie, a famous physicist and chemist, that said, “Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less” (Marie Curie Quotes, n.d.). I think this quote not only relates to the world that we are living now, but also the unforgettable, crazy semester that we have had so far.

It is a bittersweet semester for me because I am graduating this semester. Right now, the graduation and nursing annual pinning ceremony is pushed until August. I am hopeful they will still happen but know not to get my hopes up too much. I was upset upon first hearing the news, but took some time to reflect and develop a better outlook on the situation. I feel I am validated to be upset about my graduation and ceremony, but I should be ten times more grateful to be healthy at this time. I am fortunate to have parents that enjoy my siblings and I being home, and make dinners for us every night. I know this is not the case in many of my friends’ houses. Many of them still live at their school apartments because they do not want to go home. That is what also leads me to be grateful for the recipe project because I was able to not only research recipes that fit the criteria for the project, but also other healthy options. I became more invested into looking through recipes and finding cost effective options especially at this time. I think this is an applicable and important project that has more relevance now more than ever. 

I think this class has been really helpful and I wish I had taken it sooner in my college career to help me with additional papers. I realized that I can be afraid to start big, daunting papers. It is hard to begin the work on a paper that is a decent amount of my grade and has a lot of limiters on it to meet requirements. Once I start working on the paper though, and understand more of the standards, I fear completing the paper a little less and have an easier time coming to terms with the idea of writing. This has also been something that I kept in mind during this technical writing class. I had never taken a class like this before and having no set in person meeting time for classes worried me some. I am used to learning through lecture and in person assignments. This was a change for me but something I am glad I was able to complete. 

Having a strictly online class, all the assignments and not knowing anyone in the class personally can seem intimidating. I was having a hard time adjusting to the online style and trying to remember deadlines because it was always on my own time. The beginning of the semester was a difficult time for me because I was struggling personally and have been in the midst of my hardest academic semester. I would say around midterm, before spring break, I was finally finding a rhythm to help me complete all my assignments with less anxiety and more precision. It became clear that once I understood my objectives, planning, roles of each class, and strategies for organizing myself, I was able to better accommodate this semester. 

Although this semester did not turn out how I thought it was going to be, I am grateful for my time at Bloomsburg University and am grateful for the friends and experiences I was able to make. I am grateful that the nursing department found a way to enable us to graduate on time so we can become graduate nurses and help fight this pandemic by increasing staffing at hospitals. Some reports say that healthcare professionals did not sign up to put their lives on the line for their job, and I think that’s true. But I also know that the main reason I wanted to be a nurse was to help people, and that’s what I can be doing when I graduate. It is scary to think I will also be on the front line in a couple of months. I feel once I get into my role as the graduate nurse and begin helping as many people as possible, I will feel less stress and anxiety about the state we are in as long as I stay focused on my main reason for joining the nursing force. 

To sum up this final blog post, I will reiterate the quote from Marie Curie that I stated from the beginning. My main theme behind this post was that although some things at first may be scary, once one starts to understand and fulfill their role better, there is less to fear in terms of expectations. I think this is something important to remember in life and when starting anything new. I know I will always try to remember this myself. 

Marie Curie Quotes. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved from https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/marie_curie_389010