halfway there (sort of)

I recently finished the last of the seven pre-req's I needed for nursing school. I can honestly say that I've never studied that hard in my life. Nursing school begins in nine days. I've heard that it's easier, academically, than the pre-req's I just completed. I'm going to Samuel Merritt's Accelerated BSN program, and the word is you sometimes have to choose between eating and sleeping. Cool.

This past Thursday was my last shift as a volunteer in the Emergency Department at Children's Hospital Oakland, wrapping up my year of service there. When I began volunteering there, I wasn't sure that I wanted to become a nurse, though I was sure I would be resigning my job as a fourth grade teacher that year. My hope was that I would find out if nursing was "for me" by working at Childrens Hospital. I also wasn't sure what kind of nurse I wanted to be, but figured that pediatrics would be a good fit, since I had worked with children for a number of years in other capacities.

I've got a year of clinical rounds ahead of me, but I'm know pretty sure that I want to be a pediatric nurse. There was nothing about my experience at Children's that turned me off, not even the sometimes crazy parents!

My last hour of my last night was spent holding a one year old boy who had been born addicted to crack. His mother had abandoned him for the second time, and the case worker was having him checked out before he was brought to his new foster home. It was 7pm when I met him, and he had been crying since 8am. It took about ten minutes for him to calm down, but my "gift" with kids finally kicked in and we slowly started to connect. An hour later, he was chillin' in my arms as I put him in his car seat. I drove home knowing that this how I want to be of service.