plight of the nursing school perfectionist

I took a test today, a very hard test on EKG rhythms, pediatric cardiovascular conditions (congenital heart defects and the like), and OB stuff like gestational diabetes - all for my acute illness nursing class. I studied my patootie off. Did I get every question right? No.

BUT THERE IS ALWAYS SOMEONE WHO DOES.

You can probably tell I'm a little stressed by this, mainly because it is the same person who always gets 100 (or very close to it) for pretty much every test. She also happens to be my friend, so I won't cast her in a bad light except to say that I am freakishly jealous because not only is she Steel-Trap Minded Princess of Memory, but she always has the right answer in clinical rotations and the professors usually love her. If she was reading this, she'd probably point out the, like, ONE test where she scored a 92 instead of 100. Whatever. (But I love her because she's also witty and dark-humored and humors me and my ADD-ness, on top of being smart.)

I think it's not so much my jealousy of her, but the fact that even my hardest efforts have yet to return comparable grades to my efforts. Or maybe I yearn for stellar grades and never manage to put in the time required, even though I think I do. I don't know. The first time around for me for college, I never really exerted much effort, except when it came to singing, so my grades hovered around low B's, except for all those music courses I took which brought me A's. This second degree program felt like a chance for redemption - I could finally impress the world with my dazzling intellect, study like a fiend, and be the valedictorian of my class (even though, as far as I know, such a title doesn't exist anyway for our program, but whatever).

Only my grades are not perfect straight A's. They are A's and B's, about half and half all total, and that's not shabby at all. It's quite respectable, even enviable in some circles. Only the circles I hang around and the people with whom I study are these people who manage to make straight A's every single semester, no matter how hard the class. Augggghhhh. And somehow, my 3.5 GPA suddenly looks like poopy-caca in comparison. It's the plight of the perfectionist. And suddenly, I'm freaking out because I may not get the one spot available to do my practicum in the neonatal ICU and then, presumably, a job there after graduation. Or, if I completely change my mind and forget that needles inserting into spinal areas send chills throughout my body, can I still be a possible candidate for nurse anesthesia programs? It's all really ridiculous, even as I type this, because you can pretty much get a position anywhere without necessarily having to do your practicum there, and anesthesia holds no interest for me, except that I might enjoy making $125K a year sticking elephant needles into people's spines.

My cousin Christine, wise woman that she is, also went through a rigorous 2nd degree nursing program at a way-harder school, Johns Hopkins. On a side note, perhaps the reason I may not be at an Ivy League school is my use of the phrase "way-harder". Hmmmmm. Anyway, she tells me how insane all the grade competition was among the students - not that there were only so many A's to go around, mind you, but there was the same panic over last-semester practicum, who would graduate with honors, who was a member of the nursing honor society, blah blah blah. And sure enough, none of it mattered when you graduated. In some respects, yes, grades helped if you were hoping for graduate degrees... but straight A's weren't the bottom requirement by any means. And everyone graduated, got out in the real world, and realized how very few times anyone actually considers your grades. They want to know if you passed your N-CLEX exam and have you ever snorted coke, stole a Cadillac, or worked as a foreign operative for some enemy country. And even those last three things were somewhat negotiable.