this is a test

i'm checking my e-mail for the hundreth time that day. when all of a sudden i get it. THE e-mail. the e-mail from pearson-vue finally telling me that i can schedule my test! i can finally take the NCLEX and start planning my life.
of course, i'm checking my e-mail on my ipod and so when i try to log on to the website to schedule the test, my ipod decides not to pick up any internet connection. the page loads half way, takes forever, and then maybe shows me a few words on the screen.
i'm finally logged in and i can access a calendar and all of the dates are closed except tomorrow, July 4th, and August 18. WHAT?!? "i don't want to wait! i'm getting stupider by the minute!" i hurry and click the July 4th date and decide that i need to consult annalie and cyann to see when they're taking it.
but then i realize. i only have my ipod. not my phone. i can't call them. i'll just have to go see them.
i go out of my apartment and see daron, james, and russell all heading over to the school. of course! i still have one more final to complete before graduation!
i catch up with them and talk about what date they signed up for the NCLEX. they didn't even know they could yet. i'm glad i told them. they all start freaking out and pulling out their smart phones to log on and sign up.
as i'm walking around the parking lot i realize that my car is missing. my CAR?! it's GONE! WHAT!?! i tell james that i can't find my car anywhere. so all four of us start searching the parking lot for my car.
after the fruitless search we know the worst is true. someone stole my car. i won't be able to get to the final and i won't be able to go up to Draper to take my test on July 4th.
stress and despair envelope me.
i finally decide to just ride with daron even though we're all late anyway.
"i'm never going to pass this test. i'm never going to get there. i'm never going to be a nurse," i tell myself as i still in the back seat of the car.

that's what i dream about, folks. this stupid test is ruining my waking hours as well as my sleeping hours.
Argh! I just want to know when i can take this stupid test!!!

Graduation

Graduation: Everything I hoped for. And more!

Annalie and I cheesing it up!

I think my favorite parts of the ceremonies were just chilling with my classmates waiting for things to start. I love them all! They're 19 of the best friends I've ever had!

Another line up. Waiting. Excited. So happy!

My roommate Lynsie also graduated from the college of Science with her Biology degree! Together we will take over the world!

Best friend Dan made the trip down for two of my ceremonies. It was great having him there!

Mom, Dad, Lauren, and Connor came as well. This was after my pinning ceremony. As nurses we get a special pin for the two years of near torture that we go through. Worth it? Maybe.... :) The pinning ceremony was my favorite part. I was voted "Most Likely to have a song written about them." Brittni wrote a song for me later that night.

The dipolma!! My favorite part of walking up on stage was the awkwardness of it all. First we got a picture taken, then got our names called, then walked to the Dean where he gave us these dipolma covers. He said, "Let's stop right here and look this way for a photo op." I had to contain the laughter at how lame that sounded.

The President of the University shook my hand and asked, "Do you have a job lined up yet?"

I said, "Uh...... No."

haha.

Graduation was awesome. I'm so happy for the experiences that I have had while attending University. I'm so excited for my future! And to be a nurse!

Congrats Nursing class of 2011! We did it! I love you all!

Graduation time!

I can't believe that it's finally time to graduate. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't fantastically excited about moving on and getting  into this next phase of life.

As of now I don't really have a plan for what I'm doing. (Scarier for me than for you, I assure you.) When people ask I tell them that I'm staying in Cedar for a while. (Don't really know how long.) I'm staying at least for the month of May so that I can study for the NCLEX (scary nursing boards) with classmmates and not be distracted by moving and family and things. Plus, May is a good time of year to go camping. And I'm pretty sure I'll get a lot of studying done when I go camping. Then I'll take my test. (I won't know what day I can take it for another week or so. I'm hoping in a few weeks.) And then I'll beg for a job somewhere. For now I think I should try to stay in Utah. But that means anywhere in Utah. I'm considering it all. Or I've even looked at Arizona. Just keeping my options open. I could really do anything and go anywhere at this point. Kind of scary. But exciting.

All in all, I CAN'T WAIT to be a nurse. I love it so much!

life is going to be okay.

Graduation is coming. SO soon. The other day Betsy came into our class and explained how graduation will work. She got annoyed with us talking whist she was explaining but I think she forgot to realize that most graduating seniors don't have a Betsy to explain things and find where to line up all by themselves. Bless her heart.
Salt lake nursing conference was lame. As daron said, "it was a 6 out of 10 on the pain scale." ha. But I loved hanging out with my best friends and loved making memories. Like ditching the conference to chill at a bar, shopping at barnes and noble, and going to ikea. Ha. I guess I did enjoy the booths that gave us tons of free stuff.
Friend drama. I've been experiencing much of that lately. Whether it's friends being sad, crappy, breaking up, getting back together, being mean, getting new crushes.... Whew. Sometimes I just want to hide in a hole. But luckily I love my friends. So I guess that's good. I just hope that my friends' lives will stop being SO dramatic. As I'm sure they do too.

I went to the temple the other day and it was the best experience I've had in a while. I learned a lot about myself and about deciding future plans. I'm glad I can trust in God to help me out even though I don't deserve it half of the time.
I put blue in my hair. It's awesome. The other day I was looking through pictures of myself from the last two years and I had a different hair color almost every single time. Sometimes I think it's awesome, but then other times I wonder, "what have a done to my poor hair?!?!" it'll be brown for graduation. as well as possibly sporting a different style. then the plan is to not dye it for a while. stay tuned.
I only have one more project to finish before I can start studying for the 3 tests I have and then I AM DONE. Until the next week when I have to study for the NCLEX. Then I'll take that and BE DONE! Until I have to beg for jobs. Hmmm...... life never is easy, is it?

My future is very hazy at this point. It's nerve wracking and makes me sick sometimes to think about it, but it's exciting too. I'll be okay. And the best is yet to be. As brittni said the other night as she held me in a head lock/hug in the middle of Smith's, "you're life is going to be okay."
Sometimes it's nice to be reminded.

me. right now.

i'm ACLS certified. don't know what that is? well.... stop breathing and tell your heart to stop beating. and if i have the right equipment and drugs nearby i can save your life. but really now, i'm pretty excited about it. just another step closer to getting my RN.

festival of colors was successful. i think i loved it a lot.

my nephew is A.D.O.R.A.B.L.E. i can't get enough of that kid. this weekend he was looking at my dog and laughing his head off every time she would move. it was the best.

so of course that means i'm SO super excited that my sister is having a baby boy!!! the first nephew turned out adorable. and if this new one is anything like camden, he'll be another love of my life. i'm SO excited for lauren and jon!

i spent way too long doing homework today. and i don't have much to show for it. it's getting tiring. i hate pretending to care about assignments. most of them are ridiculously time consuming and pointless. i know that i'm almost done. i've never understood the statement "so close yet so far" as much as i do now.

i passed my comprehensive predictor test. i did well. and it makes me a little bit hopeful about my future.

i finally decided what kind of nurse i want to be. i want to work on the cardiovascular floor at a hospital. i worked there during my preceptorship and i loved learning. i loved knowing the heart rhythms and medications and everything about that floor. my ACLS class solidified my interest and love for anything cardiac. so i'm crossing my fingers that this happens for me someday soon.

i'm happy with life. but i guess i'm not quite as strong as i thought i was. i still allow some things to influence what i do even though i hate it. i still let things bug me even though i'm over them. i still wonder all the time what i could do differently even though i like who i am. when i think i'm over things, something else comes up and the emotions that rise up in me make me wonder if i really am.

i want to go to the beach. it's not one of those, "ah..... that'd be nice to go to the beach" things, it's a "IF I DON'T GO TO THE BEACH IN THE NEAR FUTURE SOMEONE IS GOING TO GET CUT" thing. i'm planning this trip. i'm going to graduate, take and pass the NCLEX and then go to the beach to celebrate my genius. it will happen. IT WILL HAPPEN.

i guess that's life right now.

Just a little note.

Just a little note

My hair is blonde. I thought that's what i wanted but I'm having second thoughts. And third. And fourth thoughts.

It's spring break (Whoo!) and I stayed in Cedar for the first time. It's been nice so far besides the long long list of homework that I need to do that constantly haunts me in the back of my mind. But I'm happy I stayed. I sort of wish I was there to help best friend while he's in a sad place, but I'm happy I stayed nonetheless.

Adele's voice is life changing. Brittni showed me her music the other day. I'm pretty sure I'll be purchasing her albums and blasting them all week in my house so I can practice singing beautifully like her.

Happy birthday to Cyann, one of the best friends in the world. I'm really blessed in the friendship department. I'm pretty sure God sent me the best. I don't know how I deserve it, but hey, I'll take it.

I'm so excited for my sister to have a baby. So excited. Mainly because nephew #1 turned out to be the cutest little guy and instant love of my life. I can't wait to have another nephew/niece.

I like telling people stories about my siblings. And then I realize how cool they all are. I'm lucky that my siblings are the wittiest, funniest people alive. We win.

Lately when people ask me about my plans for after school I blow up in an angry rage and usually end up yelling something like, "it's not as easy as you think!" That magical nursing "shortage" was years ago, people. It's not an easy ticket to getting a job. I can't just pick where I want and live happily ever after. And also, I'm praying about what to do next and I still don't have the answers. But I feel a move away from Cedar is inevitable no matter how much I love it here. *sigh*

I wouldn't mind being able to see into the future.

I sat out in the sun on Sunday and Tuesday. Thus beginning my yearly ritual of tempting the fates and seeing how dark my skin can get before my mom freaks out about skin cancer.

I made three pies on Monday for pi day. I'm a domestic goddess. And so I should automatically get a husband for that.

I like teaching gospel doctrine at church a whole lot. My favorite part is over preparing and trying to be an expert on all of the bible stories only to realize that when I actually do teach I never get hard questions or get enough time to teach everything I prepared. Last Sunday I did go five minutes over time but i taught everything I prepared. It was great. Second favorite part is that best friend teaches the same weeks I do so we share ideas.

I'm hating school. My classes are pointless and I feel like I'm getting stupider as the days go because I'm not learning much that relates to nursing. Learning about leadership won't help me remember that the therapeutic level of digoxin in the body is 0.5-2.0ng/dl. (I missed that on a test today...)

All in all I've been really really happy lately. Since I came back from Christmas break I can only remember having 3 days where I wasn't happy. Only 3. Record? Probably. I'm just grateful for the people in my life, for where I'm at, and for where I'm going.

Plus it's hard not to be happy when its Spring break! Whoo!!

done

My preceptorship is done.


Did you hear that?

My preceptorship is DONE!
Since the first day of nursing school I had heard about our preceptorship. How we would start off following our nurse and by the end we would have the nurse follow us instead.
I was terrified.
But I did it. All eleven twelve hour shifts. And all from 6pm to 6am. And I didn't fall asleep and/or die driving home in the mornings. (maybe with just a few close calls...)

I learned so much. My nurse was awesome. I can't find any flaws in the way he does things. I honestly think he's one of the most knowledgable nurses I've ever worked with. He's organized and rarely needs reminding about what to do. He was great. It was a pleasure doing his work for him.

I got to do a bunch of things I've never done before. Such as:

Catch a urine sample
Watch a sheath be removed
Find a heart murmur
Change a central line dressing
Put on a five lead heart monitor
Recognize crazy heart rhythms like A flutter and A fib and PVCs.
Order labs and send them out
Give nitro paste and nitro stat
Order medications from pharmacy
Give meds and IV meds without my nurse watching me
Deciding when to hold meds
Call a patients house to get a med list
Give end of shift report
Fill out care plans
Take care of five patients
Put a bandaid on a "wee willy"
Admit a new patient in the middle of the night
Order a stat EKG
Go down to the cafeteria at 1 am in search for lemon pie
Put someone on a bed pan
Sand bag a bleed after a cardiac catheterization
Set the pace on a heart pacer
Badder scan

I did embarrassing and stupid things like:

Erupt water all over a room from an oxygen humidifier
Spill heparin on a patient
Forget to clean an IV port
Get peed on
Use my own stethoscope on a patient with droplet precautions
Forget my patients names
Almost tipped a patient to the ground
Kicked a catheter box
Taking three tries to get an ID band on correctly
Letting IV meds spill on the floor
Forgetting to open the clamp to the IV tubing
Missing an IV stick (although, I did have six people staring at me while I tried. I got nervous.)
Asking a janitor how to get to the cafeteria
Teaching CNAs how to say "crazy" in Korean
Not knowing answers to questions
Taking five minutes to do a simple drug calculation
Forgetting to tie the patient's gown as we walked down the hallway.
Charting the stuff on the wrong patient's chart. (God bless delete keys.)

It was a GREAT experience.

But....

SO GLAD ITS DONE.

this was my hair after waking up after a night of clinicals.

I'm sick of driving to St. George and back 3 times a week and really need a normal sleeping schedule again.

Senioritis is...

Staying up late on school nights. Not feeling any remorse.

Not doing any homework after school.

Not printing out my schedule. Instead, texting my friends to ask when I need to show up.

Refusing to buy textbooks. Again, with no remorse.

Getting bored in class on the first day.

Daydreaming of our graduation ceremony.

Writing a blog instead of doing my assignments.

Not feeling any stress yet.

And not caring about any of these things.


Oh yeah, people. It’s in full swing.

the last first day

It was the last time I would have to eat that same breakfast of fruit, water, and a cinnamon roll. I’m pretty sure the reason it tasted so good was because I’d never have to eat it again.


Rebellious, I sat with my great friends at a back table. Remembering the previous meetings and what I felt each time.

The first time I was there I felt more awkward than I have ever felt in my entire life. It felt like I had just gone to a foreign country and I didn’t know the culture. I spotted a blonde haired girl that I had met the day before at church. Relieved, we both awkwardly sat at a table and listened as the teachers introduced themselves, as we got confused by the jargon used, and as the knot in my stomach grew three sizes. At least I had my food to occupy my attention so I didn’t explode from information overload.

The next time I sat at this “mandatory celebration” was a little bit better. I had made it through the first semester. The tears and headaches made it more meaningful. And now, being a level two, I felt like I could do anything. I sat at the table, this time with friends, and this time knowing the language and culture. And although I had a better idea of what was coming, I’m sure that I was more nervous at that time than I had been previously. Hearing our teachers introduce themselves got me even more nervous. I would be spending a lot of time with these people, and I knew only a few things about them. One, that Selwyn was really cool, and two, that Professor Howard was scary. Or so I was told. I tried to get a feel of what was about to come. But I guess I would just have to experience it myself.

The third meeting of this sort found me more excited than ever. As strange as it sounded to others and even me, I had missed school over the summer, and I was ready to be smart again. The greetings this time were more friendly than usual, and I smiled. I couldn’t wait to get back into things. This was going to be a good semester. A good year. I was ready to get lost in my text books again. Our teachers introduced themselves once again, and this time instead of wondering what it would be like, I knew it would be okay. I couldn’t have been happier to be there.

Today was a little different. Although I was happy to be there for my last time, I was annoyed to be back at school again. I entered the room and got my usual water, pineapple, and cinnamon roll. I sat with friends that I have learned to love so much. And we sat back and listened to our teachers introduce themselves. The last time we would hear them announce who they were and what they taught. The last time we would cringe when they announced Janet’s name. The last time we would laugh when Betsy said something stupid. And probably not the last time we would laugh at Kriepl’s idiocy. Because, let’s be honest, she has many of those moments.

It’s hard to believe that today was my last first day of school.

But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t happy about it.

2010

I’ve been thinking a lot about making a blog to remember 2010 and kick it to the curb because it felt like it sucked. But then I’ve been thinking about it more and more and I had a pretty awesome year. I didn't end up where I thought I would, but the journey was incredible.

Here’s what I did:

I started the hardest semester of nursing school. Got so stressed out I could have puked. And was dumped. All at the same time. So……. Not good times.

But as a result of all of that happening, I made some of the BEST friends in the world. Annalie came through like an angel, and I ended up LIVING at her and corey’s houses. I was NEVER home. And I loved it that way. They saved me.

Dan came home. That was pretty big for me. I missed him terribly. It was awesome having him text me every day because he was so bored for the first 4 months he was home. Ha.

I was in Jeni’s wedding as her maid of honor. Although I sucked at the job, I was honored to be apart of it. She’s beautiful.

Clinicals were crazy intimidating, but I loved it. Studying was hard, but I did it. I made the dean’s list. Pretty miraculous.

I moved home for the summer after praying about it. God said I should. I dragged my feet but did it anyway and thus had the BEST summer of my life. I’m SO grateful he guides me.

I worked at the pool as a swim teacher and lifeguard. And this year I loved teaching more than guarding. And I might want to work with children because of it.

I became friends with new people at work, and became better friends with awesome people I already knew. Like Ashley. And Kelsey.

I spend almost everyday with Dan. And Sarah. And then introduced them and we all became inseparable. I love them. We took fun trips together to Manti, Cedar, went to the temple, seven peaks. Sarah dyed my hair. Listened to my annoying life problems. I listened to hers. Had sleep overs. We played nerts at Dan’s house until 2 am with his sisters. And watched movies. Dan took me to the movies, compliments of the government all the time. Ha. People asked if we were going to get married twice a week. And I told Dan I would never marry him. He’s STILL offended.

My nephew Camden was born! He’s ADORABLE. And an instant love of my life.

Ryan left on his mission to Guatemala. I’m updating his blog every week.

I moved to Cedar again. This time to live with the BEST roommates this world has to offer. I love every moment of them. Staying up late laughing for no reason, watching Buffy or Bones, making dinners together, sewing dresses. Brittni is my new love. And we have a bunny son together. I love that bunny. He’s so fuzzy.

I started the “easiest” semester of nursing school. It turned out to be one of the busiest. I had a power point to do almost every week, sometimes twice a week. I ended up doing 100+ hours of community service. Wrote a bunch of annoying papers, had a bunch of annoying projects. Hated my teacher with a vengeance. Almost liked my clinicals. Wasn’t home a lot.

But I made new friends. And became better friends with awesome people I already knew. Like Cyann. And her cute little daughter Lily.

I went to the temple every week in November.

I ended up getting a 3.8! Highest GPA I’ve ever gotten in college. Made everything ALMOST worth it.

I had a good Thanksgiving/Christmas break. Went on the funnest date ever to see “Savior of the World.” Met and named Gryan, Sarah’s awesome boy. I got to see a lot of mission friends. Hugged my daughter again! Saw Kat. Played with Dan. Met his cute little girly friend. Played with my family. Babysat my nephew.

Those were the events.

Now the way I feel about it all.

I’m a different person than what I was last January. I like me better now.
I’m so happy that I can say that. I’m so happy that life has led me where it has.
I’ve got a lot of great things going for me. And I’m excited about the future.
Sometimes I feel that life sucks. But then I remember it doesn’t.
I liked 2010. But that’s over.

I’m ready to love 2011.