First Day of School

I wasn't always a dork...but since hitting college, I think you could classify me as a closet dork. I realized this yesterday as I was preparing for my first day of nursing school today. I printed off several forms, syllabuses, and documents and clutched them to my chest as I walked back to my desk at work exclaiming how much I loved the feeling of warm paper from the printer and the smell of the fresh ink. Then I jetted off to the College of Nursing on my break to buy my books for the semester, including a great stethoscope...not just the $10 Fischer-Price-like stethoscope I had bought when I finished CNA training. I met some of my classmates at the bookstore gathering their supplies too, and even though I was groaning with them at all the books we had to buy, I was silently celebrating all of the cool stuff I got to look at and was even grateful to be there.

I must say, my stethoscope is so cool and my family is going to have to beat me away with a stick because I am going to be listening to heartbeats, lungs, and intestines whenever they are around. It was $90 which was cheap compared to the gold plated stethoscopes they had for at least $400! I also decided that if Mom and Dad were here, they would want to buy me a congratulatory gift, so I bought a U of U College of Nursing T-shirt and sweatshirt that I had coveted a couple years before but had decided it would be silly to buy it if I wasn't actually in the program. Well now I am! So I am going to proudly wear them all the time! Thanks Mom and Dad!

So today orientation began. I have a cool name badge that says "Rebecca, Student Nurse." The Dean told us that on Monday we will officially be treated as RNs in the hospital setting, meaning that we can do anything RNs do from now on...so she basically told us, DON'T SCREW IT UP! The thought of me acting like an RN is so funny to me though. Me. I can give shots, change dressings, and place IVs?? I'm still getting over the fact that I can talk to doctors and they take me seriously.
Out of the about 70 students in my class, about 15 are males. A few of them are in the forties, and some of the other guys are...well, let's just say you can tell that a lot of them got in because they are males. At break, I was talking to one of my classmates that is an older guy and he was telling me about how much he has been researching travel nursing. I know it's early in the game to be thinking about opportunities after graduating, but he told me how much they need nurses in Maui and the offer for travel nurses to go there is awesome. He said you make $10k a month with your living expenses paid for.

Lastly, on an entirely different topic, I would like to thank Laura, Jill, and Jeff for bringing Gossip Girl in my life. I am a little ticked that I am addicted to a show, but one show can't hurt right? I watched the entire first season (18 45-minute long episodes) in the last 4 days. I don't know how I did it, but I am amazed at how addicting that show is...it would award it the most addicting show I've ever seen. So if you have a life, don't watch it. But if you don't have a life, I highly recommend watching it on surfthechannel.com!

You know you love me
xoxo,
Queen B
(only Gossip Girl fans will get that)