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LPN School

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

By Arianna SuárezPublished 5 years ago 3 min read
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You hear all the time that nursing school is intense, that it is stressful, and painful at times. But it is definitely worth it in the end.

I just finished a licensed practical nurse program. It took 11 months, and these months were a full rollercoaster of emotions, a lot of late nights, early mornings, and a lot of sacrifice. I had to switch to working part-time weekend nights at my job as a certified nurse aide, and become a full-time student Monday through Friday. Everything happened so quickly, and it seems like it was yesterday when we started school. But here we are, almost a year later, about to walk up on stage, proud as ever of ourselves for all the effort and sacrifices we made this year.

I am a certified nurse aide, which works "under" the LPN. I am the kind of person that likes to move on in life. I loved my job as a CNA, but I felt that it was not enough. I was more than that. I could definitely do more. And so I decided to take this journey of moving up in the nursing field. Of course, a lot of people told me that I was not going to be able to make it through, because it is so fast paced and it is a lot of information for 11 months. To those people I say thank you. I think they were the ones that gave me the extra push.

LPN school is hard, and there is a lot of information, but you learn so much about the human body and it's functions. How amazing everything fits into place, and how even the smallest little things have the most important jobs. How everything is connected, and if one thing goes wrong, everything else starts to fail.

The clinical rotations are interesting, and you learn a lot on the spot when you have a patient in front of you, as opposed to what you see in the lab with a mannequin. We went to nursing homes and hospitals, and no two days were the same. Even though you are supposed to do the same thing for about six weeks for each rotation, every day is different. You see different patients with different conditions, physically and emotionally. Every story is different.

Preparing for the NCLEX-PN is a different story. You think you have learned everything you need, and then find out there is more. So. Much. More. But when you really learn is when you get a job as a graduate practical nurse, and you live day by day with what an LPN actually does and needs to know. There is so much information that is drilled into your head when you are in school that you will not really use (unless you are in some sort of specialty); but there is also so much they don't teach you. Not because they don't want to, but because there is NO TIME. In 11 months, you cannot learn EVERYTHING there is to medicine. Obviously, because doctors take years to finally become a doctor and even they don't know everything. My instructor said all throughout the year, "You learn more as you go in the field," and let me tell you she was not wrong.

But everything we learned in class also served its purpose. You get introduced to critical thinking and time management, and the lab skills you learn are also really helpful. Of course, when you learn it in the lab it's not nearly as realistic as the real world, but it gives you a good idea of what you have to do. And our instructors did a good job at making us realize that. It wasn't until our clinical rotations where we realized that they were right!

But, like I said in the beginning, it was all worth it. The early mornings, the late nights, the cramming study sessions, everything. If I would have known how rewarding it was going to be, I would have done it sooner.

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About the Creator

Arianna Suárez

I am passionate about a lot of things, and writing has become one of them. I am looking forward to making content that will entertain you, and maybe we can learn a little bit from each other as well.

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