A Story of Our Vacation on Chincoteague

             I cannot wait until this summer. Every summer, my entire family on my dad’s side all go on vacation to Chincoteague Island. It is usually hot; close to the 90’s. The ocean is cool and the dolphins swim right up next to you while on a boat. The Town of Chincoteague is a little, old town that gives you a break from the rest of the world; however, you do not feel completely isolated, as there are a lot of tourists. The neighboring Island of Assateague, which is connected to Chincoteague via a bridge, is home to a National Wildlife Refuge. My family spends a lot of time in the refuge. The beach is in fact, part of the refuge, so I guess it is safe to say we spend most of our time in the refuge.

            The National Park Service can be seen driving and patrolling up and down the beach, acting as lifeguards and law enforcement. In the forest, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can be seen tending to the park and giving tours, as well as researching the wildlife. Back in the town, there is a large bay filled with fisherman. The U.S. Coast Guard station is right next to our hotel. You can see the Coast Guard out on their boats responding to emergencies on the bay, as well as patrolling the bay all of the time. While there, we like to fish, rides bikes, swim in the ocean, and especially eat as a family.

Spring

Spring, a time for Easter and fun.

A time to eat all kinds of chocolate and candy.

Such a great time to be in the sun.

I find that being stuck in class is not so dandy.

I just want to get out this chair and run!

I Cannot Wait to Get Done

School, I cannot wait to get done.

Two more years feels like two more decades.

The time in school seems to move so slowly.

Yet, when the weekend comes, time moves so fast.

An hour in school feels like a day,

And a day on the weekend feels like an hour.

There’s only two more years until I graduate.

Then it is on to an exciting job.

I look forward to my career.

After training for it for several years,

I better like it.

While school passes very slowly,

I believe that in the end it will all be worth it.

Thoughts About Valentine's Day

Valentine’s Day is an interesting day.

It is a day supposedly all about love.

People of all ages celebrate it.

Kindergarteners celebrate with a class party.

While older folks celebrate with a dance at the local retirement home.

Couples often celebrate by going out for a nice dinner,

While singles treat themselves to a day surrounded by their family, who loves them.

Flower shops are booming because it is the day that everyone gets flowers.

Valentine’s Day is a day to forget about your worries and spend time with loved ones.

Goodbye Poetry

Goodbye poetry.

Good riddens.

I’d rather climb a tree,

Or get stung by a bee.

Thank Heavens,

Now I am free.

After the small fee

That poetry charged me.

The Sixth Week

            By the sixth week of school, you are so sick of school that you start to feel as if you do not care about school anymore. You may think to yourself, that you do not care what you get on an assignment. You do not care whether you get an “A” or a “C.” At least, that is what you think. However, when your professor gives you back a paper and you see you got a “C” on it, you do not have that feeling of “I do not care” anymore. You suddenly realize why you are paying over $20000.00 to go to school. This gives you a little bit of motivation, to get to the end of the semester. The sixth week is the week when you think to yourself that you can get through this because you have made it through semesters time and time again.

            By the sixth week, you know that you have to do well. If you do not do good, you wasted $20000.00, not to mention the fact that you need to graduate and have a good grade point average, in order to gain a successful job, in the field that you enjoy. You now know that you must succeed at this stupid school thing. If you do not succeed, you may not succeed at anything in life. Without a degree, you cannot find a good job, and without a good job, you cannot support your family. This spells misery for your life. You must realize, that this is not your first or second semester of college. You have made it through these countless times before, and succeeded. Now, is not the time to give up, after all of the work you have put in during previous semesters. You realize that you must push on through this rough semester.

            In conclusion, you now know that giving up is not an option, you must push through the semester at all costs. Unlike in grade school, where your grades did not really matter, in college, your grades affect the rest of your life. Your grades will follow you until the day you retire. If they have to follow you, why not make them good grades. You do not want bad grades following you around until the day you retire. By the sixth week, you have the motivation to push through the semester.

            

The Fifth Week

         By the fifth week of school, you have been through all kinds of stressors, have had the distinct pleasure of pulling an all night study session, for that physiology exam, and have even exhausted the school’s caffeine supply. The weeks leading up to the fifth week were some of the most horrendous weeks of your life. Indeed, you are left dreading the beginning of the next semester, and this semester is not even half way over yet. However, by the fifth week, a new feeling comes over you. This new feeling is that of acceptance. You now accept that this semester is going to be terrible; however, you have realized that the semester cannot get any worse; this in turn gives you the feeling of acceptance. You are at peace with the atrocities that await you in the coming weeks. In the fifth week, you have a feeling of acceptance because you now know that school is not going to be getting any easier and there is nothing you can do to change this.

            By the fifth week of school, you have been through all sorts of bad things, including sleepless nights and study cramming sessions. You now realize again why you hate school so much. However, you know that it will not get any easier. By this point in the semester, you even have professors laughing at you for being so stressed. They tell you that the next semester will be even worse. While you have reached your limits, you have also realized that there is nothing that you can do but pray. You must do your best to come out of your stressful experience with an impressive degree.

            In conclusion, while the fifth week is just as stressful as the other weeks, you now realize that is nothing you can do about it. You must simply do your best and not let the stress conquer you. Although the rest of the semester is hard, you will get through it. This is only a small period of your life. Before you know it, college will be over, and you are set loose in the real world. Until then, you may as well get used to your stressful lifestyle, since it is not going to change until you graduate. Hopefully, it will all be worth it in the end.

The Fourth Week

            By the fourth week of the semester, you have finally gotten your senses back. You know everybody, you know where everything is, and there are generally no more big surprises. However, while you are now used to the flow of things, your life is not any less stressful then it was in the first, second, or third week. Now, you just know what to expect. You still feel like you are being tortured every day. The fourth week brings on an entirely new type of stress. This new type of stress is the stress of knowing that you are going to be stressed for the rest of the semester.

            By the fourth week, you remember why you hated school so much. You have to study, do homework, and write papers. All of this creates stress. Originally, in the first couple weeks, you were stressed because of the workload. Now, you are stressed because you know that you will be under stress for the next couple of months. You hate stress for obvious reasons. Stress makes may make your blood pressure go up. Having a high blood pressure, is not only unhealthy, but may also give you headaches. A headache is the last thing you need while trying to do all of your work. Before you know it, you have been studying for an exam for five days straight. After you finally take the exam, there is a brief period of relief, until you realize that the next exam is a week away. This means stress. Before, in previous weeks, you stressed out about knowing how much you were going to need to study. Now you are stressing out because you know you will be stressed out.

            In conclusion, stress is a vicious cycle. Stress causes stress. No matter what you do, you just cannot seem to get away from the stress. Parents and friends tell you that it will all be worth it in the end, but the stress clouds your judgment, and makes you wonder if it will really all be worth it. You are now stressed out about having to worry about stressing over school for the next couple of days. 

The Third Week

            After the first week of school comes to an end, it leaves you feeling pretty comfortable. You have met your professors and classmates, found your way around, and even developed a normal routine of things to do for the school year. Thus, you start to feel confident. Then, the second week hits. In the second week, your workload seems to increase slightly; however, you still feel confident. Next, the third week of school hits. This is when everything changes. Your life, once again, becomes incredibly stressful. In the third week, it becomes apparent that your sense of confidence was a false sense. The third week is incredibly stressful because of all the work you now have to do.

            It is during the third week, when you normally start to study for your upcoming exams. This takes up a lot of your time; however, you are still confident that you can get it all done. Then, you happen to look at your syllabus and realize that all of your exams just happen to fall on the same day. This is when that sense of confidence, unfortunately leaves you. You are now in a state of panic. You do not know how you are going to finish all of your studying in time for the exams. You start to think that you are going to fail all of your classes, which is bad for several reasons. First, if you fail a class, you may not be able to continue in your major, which ruins your entire career, and thus your life. Second, you wasted $20,000.00 on tuition. This for obvious reasons is a terrible feeling. However, just when you thought that your were going to fail all of your exams, you ace them all. This makes you feel a lot better. You can finally breathe a sigh of relief and sleep at night. However, you decide to check your course syllabus one last time before you go to bed, so that you can be sure that there is not anything else that you need to study for. It is then that you realize, that you have three essays due tomorrow. With all of the studying you have been doing, you had totally forgotten about them. Then, the feeling that you are going to fail everything comes back. Now, you must stay up all night, in order to finish all three essays. When you finally do go to bed, your alarm clock rings five minutes after you lay down, and you must get up for school again.

            In conclusion, while the first week of school is bad, it does not even compare to the third week. After three weeks, you are already counting the days until Spring Break. That break cannot come soon enough. When, it finally does come, you start counting the days until Summer Break. However, while the third week was bad, you know that the fourth week will be even worse. You have now lost all confidence and are back at square one.  

The First Week

            Blogging seems to be a very popular activity across all age groups. However, while it seems to be a popular activity, I have never written, followed, or even read a blog. Thus, this is a new experience for me. I am a sophomore-nursing student at a private university. As with most universities, being a student, especially a nursing student, is accompanied by an extremely large amount of work. This work includes studying, reading, doing assignments, and attending class. This large amount of work seems to lead to a large amount of stress. Often, the first week back to school, after a long break, is one of the most stressful weeks of the entire semester because you are trying to find all of your classes.

Just think about your first morning of the semester. You wake up and are all happy because you have been enjoying your break. Shortly after this short feeling of joy, you feel like you are supposed to be doing something today. Then, it hits you; today is the first day of school. Unfortunately, you are then overcome with an immense feeling of dread. After all, going back to school means long nights with no sleep, filled with studying. These nights are not exactly the most fun of nights. Shortly after you wake up, you are on your way to your first class. Once you get to school, you attempt to find your classes, only to realize that you do not know where any of the rooms are. You walk all around Knot Hall, looking for room ten; however, no matter how hard you look, you cannot find it. After looking for several minutes, someone informs you that room ten is in the basement of the building. You finally find room ten; however, you realize that room ten is for lab days and today is not a lab day, and the entire process of trying to find your classroom repeats itself. Fortunately, this imagined story did not happen to me this semester, as I seem to have finally learned where everything is at school; however, it could very well happen to me next year, as the School of the Sciences is moving to a new location. I can only imagine the stress of trying to find everything, after we move.

            In conclusion, I feel as though the first week is one of the most stressful. If all goes well, the second week is not quite as stressful. Then, before you know it, just when you were starting to get used to things, the semester ends. The new semester then begins and the process repeats itself. However, in the end, it is all worth it. At least that is what my parents and professors tell me. I strongly dislike school; however, the funny thing with nursing is that they actually make you go to school. What a dumb idea. In case you have not picked up, the last sentence was a joke. Stay tuned for some extremely stressful stories, as the semester progresses.