Best Nursing Buddies!

From right to left, Jessica, Megan, Heather and me. We have been great friends through the program. Among other things we have in common, we have all served missions. Megan, Heather and I started the program together in the fall of 2004. Megan left for her mission in Taiwan after our first semester and Heather and I both went on missions to Germany after our second semester. Jessica served in the Domican Republic right before she started. By our third semester, we were all together again and saw each other through.






Here are a couple of pictures just after convocation.

Graduation!

Graduation was such a great memory. Mom and dad came in Wednesday night and stayed with my good friends, the Lindquists.

On Thursday, they joined Emily, Richard and I for the Honors Graduation Luncheon. I had been practicing with my little group for a few weeks and the special musical number went rather well. This is my favorite setting to play the harp- with vocalists and other instruments. Here is a little sampling.

Thanks for turning pages for me Emily!

Here we are enjoying our fancy lunch!

Commencement was a great with Elder Bednar speaking.

Our nursing convocation was so wonderful. Smaller than most with an emphasis on using our education for Christlike service. Here I am actually graduating. A tradition in nursing is to get "pinned" in addition to receiving a diploma. I got pinned by Sondra, my Critical Care instructor from fall semester. My other hug is with Vickie, my capstone instructor from this past semester. I have just loved all of my instructors- they have been so great!

It was so much fun to graduate with my sister Emily and her new husband Richard. Here are a few of our awesome pictures.

In front of the Spencer W. Kimball Building, where I had nearly all of my nursing classes.

Thanks mom and dad for all of your support during college!

A few more pictures from Maryland

I just got some pictures from the girls that I went to Maryland with last month so I thought I would add a few more pictures.

Here I am in front of the University where the research conference was being held.










They hired a sand sculptor to create this work of art on the sidewalk. It was fun to watch him.

My friend Alicia and I found ways to pass the time between sessions.

We went to Ocean City for a afternoon. I just had to feel the water. Of course, my jeans ended up getting soaked. I just never learn. :)

Kristen, SN BYU

I just got back from volunteering at the Utah County Health Department free clinic. Besides being a very rewarding service opportunity, it was significant for another reason. It was the last time that I wore my student nurse uniform. Since September of 2004, I have been wearing the standard blue scrub pants and white top with my nametag. I can clearly recall my first clinical and how I ironed my scrub top the night before to make sure it looked crisp and professional. Quite a contrast from tonight when I pulled my wrinkled top from a pile of dirty clothes and covered it with a sweater.

I couldn't help but feel nostalgic as I took off my student nurse nametag for the last time (just like I did when I took off my missionary nametag for the last time). There is something comforting about having the word "student" on your nametag. It is like saying, "Teach me, teach me, make sure that I get to see anything interesting and explain in detail what you are doing." New nametags await. Now I get to be responsible for all that information that I learned in my years as a student. I can't help but think that there will be times that I will wish that I could just put on my student nametag again.

Conference to coast to coast

What a great week it has been! On Saturday, I got to go to General Conference with Jessica, a good friend from the nursing program. I don't anticipate that I will ever again live so close to Salt Lake City so I was really glad to be able to get tickets (thanks cousin Leslie!)

Early Sunday morning I flew to Seattle. What a fabulous city! I am really excited for the chance to live there. This isn't a great picture of me but you can see the beautiful view I had from the park down the street from where I was staying.

Lukcily, I didn't come away empty-handed. I got two job offers at the hospital where I was interviewing--one in medical/surgery and one in nephrology. Due to the high number of interviewees, I need to make my decision by tomorrow. Barring a revelatory dream tonight, I am planning on taking the job in nephrology. Now all I need is a place to stay. :)

And now I'm in Maryland. It is very lovely! I presented my poster this morning at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research. We are planning on going to Ocean City tomorrow night and possibly DC on Saturday. I'm so lucky to get to travel so much!

You can probably see that the top of my poster looks rather jagged. My professor had brought my poster along with another girl's who presented also. When we tried to unroll the poster this morning, it was sticking to itself. It must have gotten wet and then dried to itself (which is strange because it was in a waterproof canister). It ripping and tearing as I unrolled it so I just tried to cut off the top few inches since that is where most of the damage was. Oh well, most of it was okay.

Skedaddle to Seattle!

So this morning, I had a great interview with my top-choice hospital in Seattle. They really like me and are strongly considering hiring me. The only problem is that they are interviewing all of their candidates in the next two weeks...much earlier that I was planning on coming out. Well, to make a long story short, I found a great deal on a flight from Salt Lake to Seattle a week from Sunday. I'll just stay a couple of days, flying home Tuesday night. My flight back to Salt Lake lands exactly 8 hours before I fly to Maryland (early Wednesday morning) for the National Conference for Undergraduate Research.

It is going to be a very busy week! In the meantime, I need to finish all my projects and papers that are due before I leave. I'll be in Maryland on the last day of classes so I need to be finished with all of my semester work before I leave for Seattle. As my newest brother-in-law is fond of singing, it's the final countdown!

IV Thearpy

One of my clinical goals has to been to be able to start IVs. This is one of those things that you just can't practice on anything except real people so it is something that I haven't had as much experience in. I have only gotten one in so far and have missed two other times.

Thursday night (well really Friday morning) around 4:00 am, one of our patient accidentally pulled out their IV and needed a new one. I tried twice and missed so my nurse put it in. I was feeling rather discouraged at this. I really wanted to get that in! I had been working some pretty long hours at the hospital last week (and going to school in between) and I think that exacerbated my emotions a little.

My nurse was so nice- she saw that I was a little upset so we went into the breakroom and she let me practice putting an IV in her! I got it on my second try and it made me feel a whole lot better. I took a picture of her with her IV in on my cell phone but I haven't been able to figure out how to transfer pictures from my phone to the computer (maybe I am missing a cord) so you get this cartoon instead.