Time Management – make life easier on yourself
Sue Wiers is a family nurse practitioner and started the DNP at OU Fall 2012. She has been a guest lecturer and preceptor for OU NP students for years and served on the OU NP Committee. Her non-professional interests include reading, painting, gardening and quilting.
This is my third time around as a student; each time has been equally challenging albeit different.
As an undergraduate student, I had to learn how to manage academic demands, live with new people in a small space, and take responsibility for mundane tasks such as paying bills and tracking my bank account balances. I had a lot of energy and dedicated long hours to studying. For the most part, the focus was on me and school.
In my master’s program, the demands of my family and home life were more substantial; I juggled care of my home and children with the educational requirements of graduate school. I was fortunate enough to have been able to take a break from work while attending graduate school. However, most of classmates successfully met the demands of school and family while continuing to work; it is doable.
With the DNP program, my primary concern was about keeping up with the rigors of academia as an older and less energetic student in light of other responsibilities such as a demanding job, wife, homeowner, and daughter of an elderly parent. I no longer have the time or energy to study for long hours as I did in my undergraduate and graduate programs. However, I have mastered the art of time management. I start large assignments early and work on them almost daily.
During my commute to work, I spend my time contemplating assignments. I use my periods of insomnia doing literature reviews, reading, and working on assignments. In a nutshell, I seize the moment. I can no longer rely on long periods of time to dedicate to school and now capitalize on spending the non-traditional study time that I have. The end result is that I efficiently use my time and my work is better thought out and I am less overwhelmed.
The Commuter Connection
Janine Semperger is a Sophomore 1 in the traditional BSN program. Janine graduated from Oakland University in April 2012 with a BA in Psychology, where she was a teaching assistant and research assistant for OU’s Psychology Department. She is currently a member of SNAOU. In her free time, Janine enjoys reading, being active at the gym, and spending time with her family.
School and studying take up a very large part of a nursing student’s life, so how does a lengthy commute impact the student nurse’s daily life? This blog post will explore the benefits of commuting from home.
The Upside of Commuting
1) Though car repairs and the rising price of gas add up, they are not necessarily financially comparable to living away from home. Tens of thousands of dollars for dorm living or apartment rent that accumulate over three years make paying student loans off in the future an even more daunting task! Nursing students at orientation last November recommended commuting if the option was available and costs were a concern.
2) Working in a long-distance commute to an already-full schedule of school, work, and studying is not an easy feat. This can help improve your time management skills, which is a crucial element of nursing. The commute could also be a good time for replaying recorded lectures or taping yourself studying to replay to enhance learning and positive testing results.
3) Commuting allows students to expand our geography/directional skills. GPS devices can certainly be beneficial, but gathering an intuitive knowledge of the area over time is especially helpful.
4) While time spent idling in rush hours is tedious, it allows students the opportunity to mentally prepare for or wind down from our busy days. This is a great time to reflect and take a moment for yourself before transitioning to the next event in your daily schedule. Apparently, some commuters also enjoy spending the time belting out Spice Girls songs from their childhoods… not that I can speak from experience.
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