Pinning Ceremony

On Friday I participated in the time honored tradition of the nursing school pinning ceremony. It was wonderful to see our class together one last time before we fly off in our individual directions. Even though I was sick it was still a wonderful day! I had the honor of being voted as our class speaker and even though public speaking is not my strong suit, I have to say I did a fantastic job and feel like I was able to speak honestly and with conviction.

Below are a couple of photos & a link to the full album. Also, if you want you can watch the speech I delivered as my momma captured it on her camera. You may need to crank up the sound to hear it but I promise it's well worth it! :)

My fellow students & most awesome support crew!
I could not have done it without these ladies:
Lisa, Stacey & Laura

The man who made it all possible and without whom there are many things in my life that would not have been possible, ever. I love you baby!

Another one of the crew - just because we're so cute!

Getting antsy to get the show on the road!

You can view my speech here:



And you can see Matt pinning me here


And click here to find all the photos from the pinning ceremony.


At our school, the faculty have not always been that supportive of the pinning ceremony. Since it is linked back to diploma programs they feel that graduation is a more important event since we are a bachelor's program. I agree that the bachelor's degree is of the utmost importance however having graduation 3 months after you've finished the program is anticlimatic, to say the least. Every year though we seem to gather a little bit more support and I'm grateful for that! I am thankful to the faculty who came and participated in our ceremony and hope that the tradition grows and continues for those who come after us!

Good night caregiver

It's been a long time since I've blogged. Last quarter was much more stressful than I had anticipated and hit me in an emotional center that I wasn't prepared to defend.

Today was the first day of clinical for our new rotation. It was a good orientation and I'm excited to get started, however I've been sick for a couple days and am just drooping at this point. We got out a little early (shhhhh!) and I got a ride to the BART station. As I passed through the turnstile and rounded the attendant booth to head down to the train platform I heard a voice call out "Good night, caregiver". I stopped in my tracks.

Paused.

Realized that the attendant was talking to me! In all of my student nurse white scrubs glory, I am a caregiver.

Whaddya know about that?

Holy Cow - I survived

Both my EMT class and the after party! It's a miracle on both ends!

Our graduation ceremony is tonight and we will all be showing up wearing normal clothes. I don't know that I'll recognize anyone if they're not in all navy blue with black shoes and a black belt. Seriously!

I'll post pictures of the class and graduation later. But there will be no pictures of the party; those images are sacrosanct!

I'm going to miss hanging out and palpating all these crazy folks. And I won't know what to do with an entire Saturday at my disposal.I've met some incredible and amazing people during this journey and look forward to seeing where there lives take them. I'm truly blessed to have some of them in my life and will miss our stressed-out, study/bonding/bitching sessions (both those with & without beer). It makes me look forward to nursing school even more. If I got this close to people in 10 weeks, just imagine what can happen over 2 years!

One thing I do plan on doing this summer is learning to knit socks! I've got two books I've been dying to open but haven't been allowed until this class is over. It's open season now!

Sigh of Relief; Dance of Joy

The letter finally came today! I have been accepted into the Nursing Program at Cal State East Bay. I will begin the Fall of 08 and will be working towards a BSN! Woohoo!!

Over the past two weeks I've struck up quite the e-mail friendship with another woman who was waiting to hear about her acceptance. She got her letter on Wednesday. We have been talking each other down from the ledge on a daily basis, working to regain some sort of Zen about this whole process each time. It was nice to know I wasn't alone in my insanity and talking with someone else about remaining calm helped me to be calm(er) as well. And I'm looking forward to meeting her and becoming her classmate!

I am 1) relieved, 2) ecstatic, 3) scared to death, 4) tired, 5) numb, 6) weightless and 7) just about every other emotion I can imagine and many others I have no name for. It's hard to believe that almost 3 years ago to the month I started on this path. I took an on-line course in Sociology through Napa Valley Community College because I read that it was one of the pre-requisites for nursing and I had somehow managed to make it through my entire undergraduate career without taking a Sociology course. I was in a mad rush to start the process and the class through NVCC was the only one I could find that was open on such short notice.

As I finished up that class over the summer, I really began researching the other steps I would need to take for this little seed of an idea to become a reality: Nutrition, Chemistry, Speech, Anatomy, Physiology, Microbiology. Each semester a different class and an opportunity to meet some amazing people who were also pursing a dream. I'm so grateful to Cathy, Diane, Alison, Sheila & Heather. They are some of the strongest, craziest, smartest, sanest women I have ever met and I am proud to have shared a part of my life with them.

I can't wait to see what this next chapter brings!

And now I can truly begin to plan for the future - like figuring out how much this is all going to cost! :)

Feeling like a ding dong

Not only did I not get into the program at SFSU, turns out I haven't been accepted into the program at Cal State East Bay either!

Being the industrious, knowledge-hungry, information-gatherer that I am, I sent off an e-mail to the nursing department at CSUEB telling them I had submitted my intent to enroll and asking what other steps I needed to take as a future member of the nursing program. Her return e-mail stated "It’s great that you’ve already submitted your Intent to Enroll. The Nursing Department will be sending out acceptance letters in the beginning of May. Once you receive the letter and accept to be admitted into the program, you will be notified of the following steps you need to take."

Great! I said. And then I stopped to think about what she said. Did that mean I had *not* been admitted into the nursing program? So I asked her to clarify. And indeed that is what it means.

I have been accepted to the University as a pre-Nursing major. The nursing program will not be sending out their acceptance letters until the beginning of May (which is only a few days away). So it turns out that my back-up school, my fall-back plan is back to being an unknown. Unfrickin' believable.

This whole school thing has been such an emotional roller coaster - up and down and up and down. And just when you think you're pulling into the station for the end of the ride you get shot right back down the biggest hill of all.

Sigh.

On a wonderful note, I got my dishcloth from the April exchange. I proudly present the Starry Dishcloth from WildTomato!



Oscar does not make the most stunning model for dishcloths but he put up with me draping it on him for a little bit!

All quiet and no news makes Myla something something

So I've been forum hopping, looking for anyway to find out about the MSN program at SFSU. Nothing, nothing, nothing. At least nothing that seems promising anyway.

Found a forum at www.allnurses.com that had old posts about admissions from last year. Did some more digging and found one from this year. Looks like at least one person on there has gotten her acceptance letter; she was given until 4/18 to accept the position. Another person said she called the department and was told that not all the letters have gone out yet because it is a "slow process".

So I imagine all of the first round candidates have been notified and had until 4/18 to respond. Guess that means that they will then move on to inviting any second round candidates to fill the open positions for those from the first round who didn't accept. And so on and so forth. But I don't know if any of that is the case because I'm just filling in the (huge) gaps that exist based on what little information I can glean.

One of the posts from last year (at this same time) was that one person didn't find out about acceptance to the program until the day before it began! That is seriously messed up. How could you expect anyone to be able to jump through THAT hoop? But if it was me, I'd totally be there!

OK, deep breath one . . . deep breath two . . . deep breath three . . . Screw it. I want to know NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1 down; 2 to go

Good news came this weekend! I have been offered a slot in the Fall 2008 nursing program at Cal State East Bay!

This program is for a second bachelor's degree in Nursing. It's an 8 quarter program that I would complete in 2 years. It's one of the only degree granting programs in the Bay Area that will let you do a second Bachelor's degree. Most of the other programs require you to apply to the fast-track or accelerated Master's program if you already have a Bachelor's degree, regardless of the focus of that degree.

So I now know that I will be going to school somewhere and soon! Yippee!

I'm still waiting to hear back from two other schools. City College San Francisco (CCSF) and San Francisco State (SFSU). I'm supposed to hear from both of them sometime in April. The program at CCSF is an RN program, not a degree program. They do their selection on a complete lottery basis. This year they made two changes in the lottery program. One is that they will now weight the number of times a person has applied to the program. So if this is your fifth time applying, you'll have a better chance than someone who is applying for the first time. Also, they are now only doing one drawing a year for the two program starts (Fall 2008 & Spring 2009). While I don't hold my breath for this option (as it's only my second time applying) it would be more convenient because it's in the city.

The program at SFSU is an accelerated Master's program. They call it the Generic MSN program. Classes for this program would start in the summer, probably June. It is a three year program; the first 15 months focus on all RN skills classes and taking the NCLEX test to get your license. The rest of the course is then direct towards the masters courses. This is the program I would like to do as it is in the city and it takes care of everything in one fell swoop. I wouldn't have to work for a year or two and then go back to get my Masters.

However it shakes out, I'm just happy to find out that I am actually going to achieve my goal! It's been about 3.5 years since I decided that i wanted to go to nursing school. According to the timeline in my head, I should have been in school last year. And I did have that opportunity but turned it down. I was accepted to the accelerated Master's program at University of San Francisco (USF) and could have started classes last June. After MUCH soul searching I turned them down. Ultimately they had more of an administrative & management bent while I would like to focus on patient care and clinical skills. Plus, the costs were outrageous! Over the last few months I've started to doubt whether that was the right decision. When I get frustrated at work I think about the fact that I could have been in school right now and dealing with frustrations that were related to what I want to do with my life, not frustrations about not doing what I want with my life.

It's been hard to trust myself and trust that I made the right decision in turning down USF. I didn't really start doubting until application time rolled around again. Getting all of that information turned in to the schools kicked on my anxiety switch and started the gears turning. I've been trying to keep it in check and think I do well most of the time (Matt may disagree) but have occasionally been know to just blurt out "I want to hear about school! NOW!" So nice to be free of that feeling. Of course it won't go away completely until I hear back from SFSU, which is my first choice. (Actually, UCSF was my first choice but I knew back in December that I didn't get in there. Hell, I knew when I applied that I didn't get in there. Since I haven't cured AIDS or volunteered as a lactation consultant in the Outback I'm not the right material for their program. But I digress.)

So for right now, I am going to revel in the knowledge that the dream for my future is moving along, full speed ahead (finally). And I'm also going to buckle down for this EMT class. It's brutal. Especially since I was down for the count all day Friday so am now behind in my reading - ACK!