Consistency Is The Key;
That's How We Get Results, That's How We Transform

Sier
Don't be so hard on yourself. So whatever you want to do, you can make that into business. But everything has to come with a price right? Consistency is the price that you have to pay. No matter whatever you want to do. Be consistent at it. But never lose hope. And don't be so hard on yourself.

Brooke Smith
Everyone, welcome to MDF instruments crafting wellness podcast.

Sier
I am Sier. I'm a 24 year old nursing student. And I got to University of San Francisco.

Brooke Smith
How far along are you in school right now?

Sier
So I just finished my fifth semester out of six. So hopefully I'll be done in four months.

Brooke Smith
So one more semester, last semester?

Sier
Yeah, final stretch.

Brooke Smith
So you finish the final stretch? And then and then you take the NCLEX?

Sier
Yeah, the big NCLEX? Yeah.

Brooke Smith
So have you decided or planned out a little bit of started studying? Or are you just going to get through the last semester and then start studying.

Sier
So my school, there's some schools that require a Exit Hesi in order for you to be able to take the NCLEX. So I technically have to pass the exit hesi in order to graduate then be able to take the NCLEX so I have to get over that hump first. And then once I get over that, then I'll be able to then put my focus is on the NCLEX.

Brooke Smith
So can you tell us a little bit about a Hesi?

Sier
some schools require a Hesi to get into the nursing program, you know, to see your score and stuff like that. There's it's also called, there's another one called the tea's the tea's exam, a lot of people are familiar with that, that you have to take that and then depending on your score, certain schools will decide if they want you or not the exit hesi is something to make sure that it's to prepare you for the NCLEX. So certain schools like I know, my schools are private, but I think it's mostly privates that do this, but they require you to take the exit hesi exam to show that you have the score. And that's going to show that you're most likely going to pass the NCLEX. So it's kind of for their confirmation.

Brooke Smith
Yeah, that makes sense. Like they did their job. They Yeah, pretty much knowledge you needed to go on and succeed after you finish. Tell me a little about what nursing school has been like for you. There's a lot of different avenues people can take to get into nursing or what kind of specialty they want to be in or just what kind of career path they want to go down. Have you thought at all about what specialty you want to get into or what what life looks like down the line for you as far as your career or are you kind of just still feeling everything out?

Sier
I started college, and I did. I was gonna do two years of business because I also do like graphic design and stuff like that. But my sister got her degree in pharmacy, and I was kind of like interested because she was watching Grey's Anatomy, and I was like, I started watching it, I was like, this seems like very interesting. Like, I would love to like get into this field. So I decided to volunteer at a at a hospital. It's called Sutter, and then I was in the emergency department.So my first day as a volunteer, there was someone who came in with the trauma GFW a gunshot wound. And it was my first day there, you know, so like, I'm there in the corner as a volunteer watching a doctor do like an open chest to just to like to save this man's life, you know, and I'm just there and I see all the nurses, you know, helping out and the in the guy was when he came in, he was like, I have I have this new daughter, blah, blah, blah, like, you know, please save me. And I was just like, Okay, this is this is awesome. Like, I you get to help this person, right? But then at the same time, I'm also like, Okay, I'm watching this, am I able to, like you know, some people get nauseated with blood are seeing stuff like that. So I'm there, like, if I can handle this,I might be able to actually, you know, do this, watching this, I have it in that moment. I told myself, this is it. This is what I've been looking for. I'm from I was born in California, but my family is from Afghanistan. So it's like a war torn country. You know, so I kind of, you know, they, they put so much effort into bringing me and my sister into a better place to get better schooling and stuff like that. So I was like, you know, it's a win win, you know, I get to help other people and do something with this opportunity. And,you know, why not do it? Why not go ahead and pursue something that I find interesting and I can help other people. I'm thinking ER, maybe but you know, the emergency department emergency room. So I think that's the the path I might go into, but I'm still open minded.

Brooke Smith
It's so interesting how, you know, we just like go along life sometimes and then we just get an inkling to go do something and then that can sometimes lead us downThis whole other rabbit hole of passions that we didn't even really know that we had.It just goes to show you, when you have that little voice inside and something sparks you and you go, that's really interesting, or I want to know more about that you should always follow that kind of instinct in you because it just leads you down to more where you're supposed to be going with your life. I think when you volunteered, at what capacity were you, obviously, you weren't in health care at that time. So what kind of things were you doing as a volunteer for people who maybe start doing that,

Sier
so when I was volunteering,you it's like mostly restocking stuff,you know, you you out maybe bring water to the patients, sometimes, maybe get something from the supply room for nurse, mostly just like restocking, helping patients to the room and stuff like that. But the hospital that I was at Sutter there, so like they let the volunteers a little bit more like experience get given get more exposure, so they'll let you in the room when stuff is occurring. So like, there's other hospitals that will just like, let you just do paperwork, and you don't get any experience at all. So I would say really like talk to people who volunteer in certain places, see what their experience is like. And if they have a good experience, and they get better exposure, maybe that might be the hospital to look at. But also, I do also want to say is like, like you said earlier, like, you know, whatever intuition you have, or whatever, like, it's good to, like, follow that. I think if you don't know what you want to do, like, especially like I was just, you know, I was just business, but I went in to go volunteer to see if it was right for me. So whatever anybody feels like you feel like something might be right for you go volunteer, find the internship, and then you can make your decision on whether if this is for you or not. So that's like the best way.

Brooke Smith
Yeah, that's, that's great advice. I love that. So did you actually end up going and getting your BA in business? Or did you just kind of know?

Sier
Yeah, so I so I switched. So I did two years, I've always been a full time student. I graduated high school in 2016. So it's been a few years now. But um, I did two years full time student and ready to transfer. And then I was all like, oh, nursing, and then nursing as prerequisites. So I did another two years of nursing prerequisites. That's four years and Community College. And then I transferred over. So now I'm in my second year of nursing. I love that I love that you can just find the different paths to however you want to get there. You don't have to know, right now when they're younger, like I want to do this, do this and do this all in a linear way. You can start something and then it's better to start and then stop and say no, no business not for me, maybe I need to go down this route a little bit. Just want to kind of just dive into what people can expect. And at what semester are you going in? And like having patients and having those interactions? When does that kind of start and just what what people do expect during the journey of nursing school? Like I think some of that times people in their minds think, Oh, I'm just like learning from a book I'm studying and then I'm learning and I'm taking tests and stuff but obviously there's a practical bedside part to nursing so I want to hear about that a little bit. Oh, coming into nursing school didn't really know what to expect.I realizedthey make you get white scrubs at first, you know, it doesn't really make sense, right? You can get all types of stuff on you right and it's gonna show right the whole point of Scrubs is also to to also like you know, cover up or whatever not make it look super noticeable that you got stuff on you but anyways, yeah, so you know, we get white scrubs.And first semester, your first semester in nursing school, especially mine was kinda you do CNA work, which, you know, is a it is definitely needed. It's something that I think everybody is like, you know, anyone who gets into the healthcare field or whatever, especially like nursing or even if you want to become a doctor, like doing being a CNA, teaches you a lot. You're there with a patient, you're doing everything for the patient, helping them clean, clean themselves up at their lowest point, you know, it's teaches youteaches you a lot about yourself just as much to so but um,yeah, so you're following the CNA, you're doing a lot of shadowing, you're helping them out with whatever they need, you know, moving the patient from a side helping them or you know, watch the patient doing hygiene care. That's kind of what you can expect your first semester. Second semester is a little bit more hands on. But in this scenario, this story, it was my first semester um,So, you know, there's this call lights that you can go answer my heart. I had a patient I heard a call light. So I went to go into the room, and he's like, I need to use the restroom. You know, I'm like, Okay, well, you know, he's able to move and, you know, walk to the restroom, but like, you know, when he gets to go, this patient has to go. So, you know, I try to, I try to like, you know, I'm holding his hand we're going, and he's like, it's coming. I'm like, No, I have like,like, you know, like, we're, we're like, we're like, few feet away. And we're right next to the restroom. It just happens it he just like misses it. And thenand then he but then you know, we still make it to the restroom would still make it to the toilet, but he misses it. And he likes me. He's ice a bad day to wear white scrubs hat and I'm just like, in shock. And I'm just like, man, like, this guy did not really just clown on me right now. Like he, like, you know, he came in. I'm trying to help you sir. And he's just like, he makes something light out of it. I was just, I was just like, at that moment at White scrubs. I have to go Imagine if I did get it all myself.

Brooke Smith
Yeah, but like, why is terrible like anyone who's had you know, sneakers or just like anything? You can'tyou know that it's gonna get dirty way easier. Just eating and and in health care. You're talking you know, there's all kinds of fluids you're dealing with your blood and and paths and, you know, urine and faeces and like vomit. I mean, everything right? So, white seems like a terrible idea.

Sier
Yeah. But recently, so for my school. We had, we had a student Well, there's, we have three guys in my class, one of the guys. He was wearing all white scrubs, and one of the teachers noticed what his boxers his boxer briefs were see through.And at that moment, they're like, alright, we're changing the colours. So we wear white tops, but now green bottoms.

Brooke Smith
How big is your class because you said there's three other guys. So they're four of you total as it just predominantly female?

Sier
it is. So for my school, my cohort in my programme is kind of small, it'll have like 20 people in a cohort. So each semester, you're with those same 20 people, until you graduate. Also, we have our clinicals we have split up so clinicals for what you get if some people that don't know what clinicals are, it's, it's kind of you know, you're going to go shadow the nurse and getting your experience throughout nursing school. So our cohort splits it. So not everyone's at the hospital at the same time. There's a Wednesday group and a Friday group. And I'm on the Friday group. I'm the only male in the Friday group. So all the males are on the Wednesday group. I know I've posted some pictures on social media and some people are like, Oh, you're all you're like the only male that well. I mean, there's there's more. But in my group, and my Friday group, I'm just like, Oh, no. So yeah,

Brooke Smith
I feel like more and more men are coming into nursing. And that's actually how I personally have an affinity for nurses. So when I was like 20 years old, I got adjusted by a chiropractor incorrectly. And he did something where basically I didn't get blood to my brain. And so I passed out and I am peed myself and I lost vitals and I woke upin an ambulance and went to the emergency room. And I was in California all by myself, and didn't have any family or anything there. No friends nothing. And I was so scared because I didn't know what had happened to me. You know, I was just very alone and afraid. And I had a male nurse who he like put socks on my feet because I was cold and like took care of me and made me feel so safe.That like when I got released in like a week later, I wrote a thank you note and like drop it off at the hospital just to let him know like how much that he meant to me. And it's not like a male or female thing. It's just a nurse thing. And I was like well, nurses are amazing. And he really went that extra mile but you know, I've been to the doctors a lot and I don't see very many nurses we can we call your nurses? I don't know.Yeah, but I'm really happy to see that it does seem to be growing. It does seem to be like you know, four out of 20 Okay, we can get those numbers up. I know that you're going to be a great nurse no matter what specialty you get into but it sounds like emergency room medicine might be for you but I do have a warning. I have talked to a lot of people who you know when you get into emergency medicine, night shifts that night shift is a thing. You have to say that are you a night owl? I am I am a night owl. Yeah, that's good. Because I hear like when you first start out you have to do it.

Sier
Nice. Yeah, like anxious. Yeah, I mean, I do photography and, and I can't hear but like photography, editing photos, some depending with my school schedule, I might stay up to like 4am editing photos. So yeah, like being an I was kind of. That's awesome. I love to hear a little bit more about that. Okay, so you cut hair? Yeah, your photography, let's talk a little bit about your passions. How did you come into this? Like, what's any stories there, I had just got an internship at Apple in my senior year of high school.So I had money saved up, and I had my friend would always cut my hair, the internship ends, and I need to look for a job, what can I do to manage school and, you know, have hours that I need for myself, and then the rest, I can go to school. And you know, and work. So I just, I just paid $500 for equipment, and I just went in full full full at it, because I already found interest in it. So my thing was, if I'm going to put money into this, I need to make this money back. Right? So. So I did that I used to get practice, I used to drive somebody out 30 minutes, pick them up, bring them back to my house, cut his hair, and then drive them 30 minutes back for free. I didn't charge him or anything. But that's what I needed to do to learn, right. So you have to do what you got to do to learn I was an investment for myself. And now you know, I have an appointment on my website, and people book them. And you know, I cut one day, a week Saturday from nine to three. That's enough to keep me busy for you know, for the whole week and you know, gas or whatever I need to do. And then maybe you know a few people throughout the week, photography. I did. I did graphic design since middle school. And then I got into high school I did yearbook. And then I had birthday money saved up and I used all my birthday money for a camera. And then from there on out it just slowly as the years progressed, I got into more photography. And yeah, hopefully slowly going into maybe weddings, and like party events and stuff like that. It's a lot of creativity combined, but I'm able to choose my hours, and do nursing at the same time and have enough time to study. So that's where that's what was most important to me is doing stuff, but I'm able to focus on school. Yeah, well, you have amazing hair too. So that doesn't hurt artists little while.

Brooke Smith
No, you know, it's funny, as I talked more and more health care, people, everyone has a creative outlet, because I think to be drawn into healthcare, especially nursing, you have to have a certain kind of empathy and certain kind of heart that leads you to want to help people be there for them, sacrifice, you know, your holidays with your families. And you know, nursing is not for the faint of heart. So I think certain kinds of people are drawn to that. But so that is in alignment with creativity. And it's great to have other outlets outside of nursing to be able to kind of express yourself. But it's really interesting, because everyone I talked to like, especially nurses, they all have some sort of creative outlet, whether it's like writing poetry, or drawing oracting or whatever it is photography, it's very interesting, because I just think that it kind of shows that there's this certain kind of person that goes, that is also kind of an empathetic type of person. Expressive, creative. And who knows, you know, maybe you'll be able to combine all of this, you'll be like the nurse that's helping out in the emergency room and then someone's in the ICU for a week or two and they need a haircut. You know, you cando you like before and after photo, you know, like makeover style. If you could tell your younger self anything like advice, or I wish I had known this, what do you have any kind of advice? Or what would that be?

Sier
Yeah, I thinkI think it would be don't be so hard on yourself. Um, I was in high school, just always stressed about, like, what am I going to what's my career going to be? When am I going to find what is for me? And I, you know, I wasn't always the best in high school, like, I mean, I would get A's, B's and C's, but they weren't straight A's. You know, I would always have a creative outlet, do creative things, but I never felt like there was any worth in that until becoming older and seeing you know, businesses needing certain stuff other people, you know, there's needs for anything. So whatever you want to do, you can make that into business. People want to play video games their whole life. That's totallyFine, you can go on Twitch and stream it, you can be a Twitch streamer, you can, but everything has to come with a price, right consistency is the price that you have to pay. So no matter whatever you want to do, be consistent at it. But never lose hope. And don't be so hard on yourself.

Brooke Smith
It's really good advice. I think consistency is the key, I always try to tell myself that, you know, when you get discouraged, or something's not turning out the way that you wanted, or you're still trying to learn something, you know, you're gonna fail a lot before you get to the place that you want to get to. But you just have to keep showing up, you have to keep trying, and you have to keep showing up. And even if if you wanted to be a video gamer, and do Twitch, like you might only have one person watch for a week or two, and then you know you but you have to keep showing up, keep creating the content,

Sier
If it was easy, everyone would do it. So it's not right. So there's always this, like, feel everyone's watching other people and be like, I wish I was like him. But they don't know what that person went through to get to that position. Right. So

Brooke Smith
yeah, and I love that you're showing like an entrepreneurial spirit. And also just showing your thinking outside the box, that you don't just have to be one thing, you don't just have to be a nurse, like you can be a nurse. And you can also be a barber, and you can do you know, photography, and you can be raw, multifaceted, so you can be more than just one thing. One certain focus doesn't have to take your entire life, you know, I was talking to like a travel nurse before where they kind of were like, well, I really wanted to travel and have an adventure. And so I combined my love for helping people with my sense of adventure. And then, you know, while Ah, there you go. So I think it's important for people listening and watching to just remember that you can think outside the box, you don't have to do something one way, there's, there's a lot of different ways you can do it. And also, you can pursue multiple things at the same time.

Sier
For me, it wasn't I didn't learn barbering and photography, both together, it was one year, you know, it was one focus there. And then another year that focus there. So you know, don't have anyone who's trying to do multiple things, don't overwhelm yourself, you know, just make sure you give yourself time for one thing to at least learn it. And then you know, learn another thing. So

Brooke Smith
Yeah you're really committed you spent money, and then you need to learn so that you understood, okay, well I'm gonna have to if I really want to be good at cutting hair, and I want eventually people to pay me to do this, then I'm going to have to make sacrifices to learn this skill and learn this craft. So I'm going to have to offer to cut people's hair for free. It's probably the same with photography, like Oh, my take your picture for free, can I, I need to work on like, I want to make headshots or I want to do this kind of photography, can I come to your wedding and just be an extra photographer, you know, and then as your work gets better, and people start to see and then you get word of mouth, and then eventually you start to make money doing it. But you can't always do that right out the gate. But I love commitment that you have where you're like, I'm in this 100% Like, now I need to make it pay pay me back. And I think that's the kind of gung ho like Spitfire Ness, you need to pursue really anything, you know, you can't really half assed your way through stuff, it's just you're not going to be successful at it. Exactly. Any other fun stories in nursing school or things that you thought were going to be different than, like expectations versus reality.

Sier
Going into nursing school I had, I didn't know exactly what to expect.I thought everything was going to be structured properly. But going into clinicals you know, you realise quick that it's kind of a mess. A lot of nurses got to figure stuff out on their own. It's everything's not pretty straightforward. And there's a lot of like you said, there's a lot of creative nurses, there's a lot of creativity that goes on behind, you know, just being a nurse coming up with you know, what works for you making sure you know, time management pay in managing, you know, different many patients and what they what their needs are, right. So there's a lot ofthere's a lot of that that's going on, I thought there was a I thought there was a big backbone for nurses, but it's really not nurses are the backbone themselves. They take on all the pressure at the end of the day, you know, trying to lift up their patient. I started off doing med surg, med surg is like, you know, and I know in some places like East Coast, they might have up to eight patients. In California, from my understanding, I think it's up to five, it can get crazy. You have to you know, make sure you give everyone's a medication on time. And then also making sure whatever the whatever needs they have, they get addressed as well. And sometimes you'll be behind and that got overwhelming for me because that's not something I experienced as a volunteer. I was only a volunteer right and then I never got to experience really the back end of things. But as I gotinto further into nursing.I just had labor and delivery OB section of my semester, the my fifth semester and I got to be at the NICU with the with the babies andand that was those nights. I mean, you know, some of the nurses might take care of one baby depending on how sick they are in, you know, Max up to three. And that was my first experience with ICU. And I, you know, nurses will either have one to two patients in the ICU, but you know, never really five. So there's there's different types of nursing different works for everyone differently. Some people are able to do time management, take care of all that and be cool with all that stress. You know, every every nursing position can be stressful, but it's what works for you. And I was just overwhelmed. Because my first year was pretty much just all med surg, and I was all like, there's no way this is just nursing, like I went from experiencing like emergency medicine. And then going into med surg and thinking like, this is just what nursing is. And this is what I just have to accept that but then going to different specialties is I'm like, okay,different stuff for me, but I can venture off to, and I'll be fine. Now enjoy. And I can I can like, be cool with and just learn a lot of So yeah, that's really awesome that you get to kind of dive into the different specialties and kind of it helps you decide what you like where your passion really is. Because like we were talking about, there's so many different ways to be a nurse, so many different avenues. Yeah, different departments.

Brooke Smith
Yeah. So it's like maybe med surg isn't for you, you know, but maybe something else is more your speed. But also what you're talking about is, you know, something that we talk a lot about, which is safe, you know, staff patient ratios, and making sure that our healthcare workers aren't overwhelmed with having so many patients that they can't give the proper care that they want to give, because there's only so much time in the day, and so much shift to do and so much, there's just, it's impossible. So we really, I know, in California, I think that they passed a law where you're only allowed to have certain number of patients per nurse. But it's not like that throughout the whole country yet, you know, didn't have to follow suit. But it's definitely a fight that we're on board with, and you know, trying to make sure that you guys are protected and safe as well. Because at the end of the day, if you make a mistake, even though the hospital didn't staff, you appropriately with a number a number of patients, at the end of the day, the hospital is going to blame the nurse. And that was true with that woman Redonda Yeah,

Sier
The medication error, which was, you know, predominantly, it was a system. It was a, you know, hospital system problem. But yeah, but

Brooke Smith
when you're up against hospital and you're just a nurse, you're one person, you know,

Sier
you're a human that's united, you know, like you'retaking care of other human beings, there's mistakes bound to happen. And you can only do so much, you know, like other people, people who don't go into the profession, you know, they don't get to experience what you know, other nurses go through and it's it gets it gets overwhelming gets difficult. But at the end of day, you're human right? So it's just like the hospitals should be looking out for the nurses best interest because, you know, I've spent the daywithout without health care without staff without nurses. No one's taking care of the patients.

Brooke Smith
Exactly. And you're also like you're having to work under pressure, especially in emergency room situation. You know, there's a lot going on. So it's just we got to help our health care workers by making sure that nurses are protected and they don't, they aren't overwhelmed as much as we can help them not be overwhelmed because it's already an overwhelming job. But we can we can do things like make sure that we have safe patient staff ratios. We'll Sier I want to make sure I get your social media handles for anybody who wants to come follow you check out your journey in nursing school. He's got one more semester left and he's going to be doing I'm sure he'll be doing lots of posts on the NCLEX and how he's studying for it. So would you mind giving us those?

Sier
Yeah, so my Instagram and you can find me on Tik Tok as well. It's actual art. @actualart So it's a c t u a l actual and then art AR T and you just search that up I should pop up?

Brooke Smith
Yes, he has all kinds of amazing content. You guys have to check it out. He's telling fun stories. He's doing dances he's he's doing all kinds of fun stuff. And advice.

Sier
Yeah, I try to I try to diversify. So you guys, you know need any advice? Hit me in the DMS. I will try my best to answer there and you know be the best resource of information for you guys

Brooke Smith
thank you so much for joining our crafting wellness podcast