Who doesn't dread finals week?! Pretty sure NO ONE. This was my third round at finals, but being in nursing school (more like medical school) it was nothing I had ever anticipated. All of us were just waiting for our "funeral" or so we called it. The test we were absolutely terrified for was our Pharmacology final. We basically had to know every drug and everything about them. Impossible right? Yeah pretty much. So here's how studying for that final went down...
Well we knew we would be studying for ETERNITY so we decided to enjoy ourselves and have some sparkling cider! My study buddies were Megan, Kylie, and Whitney. I have become very close to them over the last few months and we have a lot of fun together.
After studying for 8 hours straight on Tuesday night we decided to call it a day and we would continue the next day. Our final was on Thursday so we were planning on taking it the latest we could possible.
So on Wednesday, Kylie, Megan, and I met again to hit the books. We had planned for a very very VERY long night ahead of us so we planned ahead. We ended up buying a ton of snacks aka junk food that would make us gain 20 lbs. Best way to cope right? We thought so... Don't worry we had a huge tummy ache for the next few days haha.
Well if you didn't think that was enough, we decided to order pizza. Long story short, we bought one pizza and ended up with three... what an interesting night!
We were pretty excited about eating pizza!
Not to mention way sick :)
As the hours passed on and the more our brains started turning to mush we started getting ornery. Let's just say we weren't too happy about this test and couldn't wait for it to be over with.
With the amount of material we had to go over and the limited amount of time we had to do all of it, especially since we felt like we weren't prepared at all and knew nothing, we had to come up with creative ways to memorize everything. After trying to make a "condensed" study guide (hint hint on the condensed part), it ended up being 186 pages. Yes you read correctly....
186 pages!!!!!
Yup... definite fail. So we tried just looking at each class of drug and finding different ways to remember them and that one only ended up being about 40 pages for our comprehensive test, which was slightly better. We did have fun coming up with ways to remember the drugs. Being tired definitely played a factor on how weird the things were we came up with!
For example:
This is "Phenytoin." This is an anti-seizure drug. The way we remember it was because first off it sounds Chinese so we pictured an Asian lady. You can't take this drug while you're pregnant so her pregnant belly is crossed off. It can also cause a gum disease of some sort so we drew this type of gingivitis. And last off, it increases your risk of osteoporosis so we drew squiggly extremities. Yes we are nerds, but did we remember it? OH YES!! We were joking about how we would be drawing all these weird pictures during the test and people made fun of us. We also came up with actions and phrases as well to help us study. It was quite entertaining!
Another strategy we tried was watching YOUTUBE videos on different drugs. Here's a video of us dancing to one of them being dorks. Don't worry we look ridiculous because this was taken at 3 in the morning after studying for 12 hours straight... NO BIG DEAL!!!
After this point we came up with a plan. Cram for a few more hours (meaning pull an all-nighter), go to breakfast, take the test when the testing center opened, and then go home and crash and party later. After much deliberation and hesitation, I was convince so the madness continued! We decide to take a late night run to Macey's to buy some food that was actually healthy for us so we grabbed that and then came back to cram. This is when panic and serious anxiety started to occur. We were exhausted, overwhelmed, and just couldn't take anymore. Finally at 7 a.m. after studying for 16 hours straight, we called it quits, but instead of going to take the test, we went home and crashed for a few hours, studied for a couple hours, and off to the test we went.
After memorizing over 200 drugs we were so excited and ready to be done with the stress! After much crying, stress, being in the testing center for two hours being tested on stuff we didn't even study, crying some more, we were D-O-N-E.... DONE!!!!!!
I can honestly say I've never studied so hard to do so bad on a test in my entire life, but with most people averaging the same as me (which was terrible) and still getting an A- out of the class, I didn't even care! We decided to celebrate by going out to dinner and having a chill night by watching a movie.
As you can see we were so beat! haha I can honestly say this finals week was one of the worst and hardest weeks of my entire life, but having good friends and a supportive family got me through it!
I passed my first semester of NURSING SCHOOL!!!!!!
(And may I add I got letter grades in the A's!)
I am very grateful to be done for a few weeks to be able to catch up on life and enjoy the holiday.
