Someone Please Explain

I was in my senior year of high school when I decided that I wanted to be a nurse.  I had been talking to my friend’s mom (who is a nurse) and my parents and we all finally agreed that Nursing was the best career for me.  Once I decided that I was going to be a nurse I threw myself into becoming a nurse; sure I hit bumps in the road but I never gave up.  I was too stubborn to quit. Along the way there was much talk about the nursing shortage and everyone I talked to told me that I would have no problems finding a job.  As I went through school I fell in love with the Spanish language so after talking with a professor; I decided to minor in Spanish and eventually work towards getting my translation license.  After that decision everyone told me my ticket was written.  Any hospital would be lucky to have me.

Now 2 months after graduation I have no job prospects, I am back living with my parents because my lease was up and I didn’t know where I was going to get a job so I didn’t want to sign another 12 month lease that I might have the break.  I have filled out 100 applications and plan of filling 100 more.  This isn’t so much about the work I have to do to get a job; I’m willing to do the work.  What makes me so mad is that no one will even give me a chance.

Yes there are jobs for nurses out there, but the majority of them require (not prefer) 1 year of experience.

Now what really steams me is finding out about Representative Wexler’s Bill which would bring 20,000 foreign nurses over to the US for 3 years to help with the nursing shortage.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME!  The problem is not the nursing shortage it’s self it is the hospitals that don’t want to hire new nurses.  What is the point of pushing people towards a career in nursing if the hospitals won’t hire you?  If I am in the hospital as a patient no offense but I don’t want a nurse, who is the key to my recovery, so heavily accented that I can’t understand what she is trying to tell me.  Not only that but I came across a forum for new nurses in my search for jobs and there were several nurses licensed and everything that have been searching for jobs for over 6 months.  We don’t need foreign nurses we need the hospitals to get incentives for hiring new graduate nurses.

I am a newly trained nurse, who happens to speak Spanish fairly well, I am a quick learner and I love what I do.  I just need someone to take a chance on me and give me a job.  I would think that a hospital would want to hire new nurses because we are trained on the newest techniques and skills; we are not jaded by other hospital’s policies and procedures.  If you hire us we won’t take short cuts and we will do it right the first time because that’s the only way we know how to do it.  We will work harder for you because we are eager and excited about being a nurse!  Who would not what a nurse like that? Someone please explain this to me!!!!

New Bill that would allow 20,000 foreign nurses annually to enter the US

http://www.mynursingdegree.com/career-news/2009/08/new-bill-that-would-allow-20000-foreign.asp

What a character . . .

If you could be a character in book what kind of character would you be??  Would you be the hero, the wimp, the women, the child, the nerd, the hottie, the victim??  I think that when you write about a character in a book you take pieces of who you are or who you wish to be and incorporate them into that character.

If I were to be character in a book I would want to be a strong, confidant female that is smart and knows what she wants in life.  I wouldn’t mind a little sex appeal because I just think that’s something I don’t have.   I would want to discover something (not like a treasure, but maybe just something about myself), I would want to make a difference in someone’s life.

I know that’s a lot for one book, but no one says that a character has to be limited to one book.  I mean think about life, you can think about it in terms of chapters in a book or even in different books.  I just graduated college and I consider each year that I devoted to school as a different chapter and I have finished the book on that part of my life.  I am currently starting a new book.

Ok so now that I know what kind of character I want to be in a book, what kind of book do I want to be in??  Not a horror or thriller that is for sure.  I think I would like to be in a mystery or feel good book with a little romance mixed in there.  Everybody’s got to fall in love!!!  There most definitely has to be humor in the book because what am I without laughter.  I know what I want now I just need to write it!!

If you could be a character in your own book what would you be like and what kind of book would it be???

My last day in the hospital…

“Alright, I guess you’re done for the day, well actually for the rest of your college career.” I grab my coat off the back of the door, swing it over my shoulders and slid my arms through the sleeves.  I start my walk to the elevators.  As I’m walking a realization hits me, I will never return to this hospital as a student nurse, I will never again have to wear blue and gold strips on my sleeves, and the next time I walk into a hospital it will be for an interview (hopefully).  I don’t walk at the usual quick pace that I am accustomed to; I want to take it all in.  I hear the banter and laughter of the nursing assistances at the nurse’s station, I can hear the beeping of an IV pump indicating the fluids are almost out, I can hear the unmistakable sound of a call light going off; all of these things that I won’t hear again until I have a job.   Once I get to the elevators I hit the down button and wait for the ding of an arriving elevator.  I spin around slowly and whisper a soft goodbye to the floor where I learned to venture out on my own; I transitioned from being a nursing student to a nurse.  I learned when to call for Rapid Response, when to question what a doctor orders, how to handle lots of needy patients and how to be the nurse I want to be.  There is no one around during all this contemplation and when the elevator arrives there is no one in there either. The hospital seems oddly at peace, but I’m sure that some where commotion is going on.  I hit the 1^st floor button and ride to the bottom, picking no one up along the way.  I walk again slowly through the atrium, remembering all the times that I have walked through here heading to a new and exciting floor.  I particularly remember my first ride to the 6^th floor on my very first day of clinicals in the hospital.  Thankfully I met up with a few of my fellow class mate in the parking lot and we all walked nervously into the hospital, when we passed through the atrium we were all so nervous and excited.  We had no idea what to expect.  If I could I would love to relive it all over again, or at least watch it and see how much I’ve grown over the last 4 years.  I pass by the hostess stand where so many times I had to stop and ask for directions.  I turn right and head straight winding through the halls that I have walked through so many times before. It seems bitter sweet, but perfect too because I am experiencing my last moments in the hospital by myself, knowing that in this hospital I learned how to be independent.  I turn left out to the Spring Street Exit and the hostess sitting at the door says “Goodbye, Have a great day!”  I turn and smile back, because I know I will.  I am celebrating 4 years in the making I’m going to be a Registered Nurse, Woo Hoo!!!!!

I think I miss placed my Crystal Ball…

Things to do:

– Finish Papers and Projects

– Take Tests

– Find my Crystal Ball

– Pass Exit Exam

– Pass Finals

– Finish and Pass anything else the professors can throw at me

– Graduate

– Celebrate

– Study for the NCLEX

– Learn to use my crystal ball and see that everything will work out fine

– Take and Pass the NCLEX

– Get a job

– Find a House

– Move

– Have everything work out just fine!!

(- Somewhere in there, Grow up and become an adult that can make decisions)

Ok so I am getting into my last 2 months of college ever (well for a while anyway) and I am getting a little over whelmed. See I had this trip to Spain that I was doing over spring break and I thought that when I got back everything would be smooth sailing. Well, I was wrong! I have about 6 weeks to get everything done for graduation, then there’s all the stuff that got to happen after I graduate.

I just wonder how people transition from college life to grown up life without the stress. I’m making big changes in my life after I graduate like moving away from my friends and family to be closer to my boyfriend. This is really scary for me, however my boyfriend thinks it will be just fine. He is calm and cool about the whole thing, how I don’t know. I wish I could be cool and calm about it, but I need a plan.

I need a crystal ball so that I know the decisions I’m about to make will work out for the best, so that I can make a plan on how to get there. But I seem to have miss placed my crystal ball and I don’t think I will be able to find it anytime soon (maybe I’ll find it in the move, but that’s too late.) How do people do it? How do you make a decision and know that it’s the right one? Anyone have any advice????? HELP PLEASE!!!!!

The Bad Side to Romance Novels

I know that I haven’t posted anything recently but that is all because I have been trying to make it through this semester in school.  I am almost done 2 more exams and then I have one more semster before graduation!  Woo Hoo!!  Even with all that going on I have still found the time to read a few books.  I found this series written by an author that I have read before.  Her other books were great so I had no reason to bought that these wouldn’t be good too.  But WOW!  This book was not a romance novel it was a sex book.  In every chapter there was sex and once you to got to the end there was still more sex.  I know that I like romance novels but there still needs to be a story there.  Not just two people meet and then there is sex going on.  I skipped reading half the book because I was just trying to find the story in the book.  If I could I’d like to get my money back.  Anyone can write a steamy sex scene but it takes an author to write a romance novel.  There has to be a memorable meeting and a building attraction to one another, there should be a fight for affections.  That’s what makes a good romance.

I like mine to have a murder mystery vibe to them too.  Rachel Gibson wrote a great short series which was about 4 authors that were friends and each book goes into one of their lives.  The best part is that each book is written in the style of that particular author, a True Crime, Murder Mystery, Romance and Science Fiction.  These are great books! At least in my opinion.  That is the beauty of reading though, what I like others might not.

However if there is no story to follow then you might as well just call the book porn.  It’s books like that, that give Romance Novels a bad name.  That is what most people already think about Romance Novels, so books like that are just perpetuating the cycle.  Come on authors do you really think that is a good book?  Having read other stories that are soo much better than this book to me it just seems like laziness on the authors part. I need a book with more substance than just sex.  Books like this are the bad side to Romance Novels.

Scared Shitless

I haven’t shared a lot about me personally in my blog, part of the reason is because I don’t know my readers so I don’t want to just sit there and talk about myself, how boring would that be.  Well currently I made a realization in my life and I thought that I might share it.

I am a senior in the Nursing Program at my college.  I graduated high school in 2003 and am just now about to graduate school in May 2010.  Add it all up and I have been in college for a total of 7 years.  When I tell people how long I have been in school the first question that they ask me is, “Was nursing your first career choice?” Yes, since going into college I have always wanted to be a nurse.  I went to a Community College for a year and a half because I was really scared about going away to college.  When I finally went away to college it seemed like my personally life kept stopping my college life.  I lost 2 grandparents and was in a very bad car accident in the first semester that I was away at college.  Because of this I didn’t pass the classes I needed to get into the program.  Things like this kept happening.  It has been a constant struggle to get what and where I need to be.  But through that struggle the goal as always remained the same.  I never gave up on my dream to be nurse.

Now that I am so close that I can almost taste it, and I am scared shitless.  Where am I going to go, what area should I work in, and will I pass the NCLEX (Registered Nursing Exam).  All of these questions are running through my mind this semester.  It seems that everyone in my class knows where they want to go.  I have an idea but I am currently not sure and I don’t think that I am ready to make that choice.  But that is not the scariest part for me.  Through all of my time in the Nursing Program I have had my nursing instructors: there to have my back, they had the answers if I didn’t and they were always there to double check stuff and make sure I didn’t kill a patient (not that I ever did or tried to, but still).  It scares me because I will have to be the one with the answers and I will be my double check and there is no one there to constantly have my back.

I know that I will make a great nurse someday and I am ready to graduate school.  But am I ready for the real world.  For a long time (7 years to be exact) I have had that comfy, cushy feeling that even if I mess up in school I still have another chance to make it right.  There are no more chances, I can’t mess it up, I have to graduate and be a big girl in the terrifying Real World!!  I Am Scared Shitless!!!

Remembering a Day

There are very few events that happen in your life that you can remember exactly where you were, what you were doing and what you were thinking.  I remember the day that I got my acceptance letter in to the Nursing program at my college.  I was minutes from leaving to go to Atlanta; the next morning, bright and early, I was leaving to go on a month long study abroad to Mexico.  I was really confused and afraid when I opened the letter because we weren’t suppose to hear about it for another month.  I tore open the letter and had to read it a few times, I was even shaking so hard that I had to hand it to my dad to read because I wanted to make sure that I had read it correctly.  When my dad said “Yes, that’s right you got into nursing,” I started jumping up and screaming and yelling for my mom.

This is one of the happier moments that I remember.  I remember where I was when each of my grandparents died, when I found out that one of my best friends from high school had been murdered and I remember the day that I found out my mom had a 20 lb tumor on her ovary.  Most of all I remember where I was the day our whole world changed

The date was September 11th, 2001.  I was junior in High School and it just seemed like every other ordinary day.  I had just sat down in my chemistry class, when my friend, Jennifer (this is the aforementioned friend that was murdered) came rushing in to ask if I had heard about the plane crashes.  I was clueless, I didn’t know what she was talking about.  She told me all the details that she could gather from the news program she had been watching in her previous class.  (See some teachers that day let us watch the news and others tought it would be too upsetting.)  When our teacher came in our class room all we could talk about was whether or not it was an accident.  We went on with class, and when we were dismissed I went on to my next class which was lunch and newspaper, so of course we watched the news.  It was in this class that we learned about the third plane that hit the Pentagon and the fouth one that went down in Pennsylvania.  It was then that everyone knew for a fact this was no accident.  This fact gave me chills, after that all I wanted to do was go home.  When I finally got home that day my dad was there, he had left the office to come home for the day in order to hear the news.  We talked about what was going on and what it meant for us.  I remember saying to him, “I don’t understand, what did we do to these people, and why would anyone want to kill all those innocent people.”  It has taken me years to finally come to terms with what happened that day.  I will never understand the urge to kill innocent people.  But from this I have pushed myself to learn about different cultures and religions so that I might better understand where people are coming from.  This is one day in many that has changed the world or atleast changed our world.  Don’t ever forget the people that lost there lives just so these men could make a statement.  And remember to live life to it’s fullest because it can change in an instance.