My nursing school class is composed of two elements: the traditional students and the accelerated students.
There are a couple of key differences you should be aware of. First, the traditional students live on campus, and the accelerated students mostly don’t. Most of the accelerated students already have degrees, are pursuing a career change, and are older. The traditional students started clinical rotations last semester and are doing what the accelerated students will do this summer. Finally, we will all be seniors together.
Last semester there wasn’t much of a divide because we were all figuring things out. But even then the traditional students and the accelerated students tended to sit together in class.
Fast forward to this semester—all of a sudden there’s an apparent divide between us. The traditional students think they’re pretty cool since they are already in clinical’s. At some point during a particularly condescending exchange in class from a couple of traditional students, it occurred to several of us that we will all be seniors together and in clinical rotations with these people. Which is, of course, going to be awesome. (Sarcasm emoticon)
Clearly, the best way to solve this problem is to have a senior year clinical rotation draft.
The accelerated students can pick the traditional students they feel they have the best opportunity of learning from/with, and the traditional students will be given the opportunity to up their game a little bit. Everyone wins—especially the patient’s because they will be getting better healthcare. It will also give the accelerated students some motivation to actually get to know the traditional students. And, it will help the semester go faster.
Of course this doesn’t bode well for the traditional students who think it’s cool to treat the accelerated students like they are idiots. I mean we are the ones with accelerated in front of our name, which should mean something besides "I planned poorly the first time, so now I want to get this done as fast as possible."
