Student Nurses Week starts tomorrow!!
Here's the itinerary for the week:
Monday, Feb. 28: Appreciation Day
-Free lunch for student nurses, faculty and staff
-10:30 am- 1:00 pm (Student Commons)
Tuesday, Mar. 1: Clinical Speakers
-Clinical students from each semester will give a brief summary of their experiences in the program
-5:00 pm- 5:30 pm (S261)
Wednesday, Mar. 2: 5th Semester Brunch
-5th semester students will receive their attache cases from MU Nursing Alumni Organization congratulating them for their acceptance into clinicals
10:15 am- 12:00 pm (Upper Crust, Downtown Columbia)
Thursday, Mar. 3: Round Tables
-Learn from clinical majors what life as a nursing student during clinicals are really like. Students will share recommendations for balancing the challenges that lie ahead.
-4:00 pm- 5:00 pm (Student Commons)
Friday, Mar. 4: Pancake Breakfast
-All-you-can-eat pancakes fro $2.
-7:00 am- 9:30 am Student Commons
Recruitment Far (Nursing Student Council)
-Missouri hospitals will be at the School to answer questions about employment opportunities
-11:00 am- 1:00 pm (S342)
I am a pre-nursing student in the highly competitive nursing school at the University of Missouri. This is my journey to become a nurse in one of the best programs in the United States.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Alternative Spring Break
Here's the lowdown on my alternative spring break this March:
Alternative spring break is organized through Mizzou. I applied to go on a trip last semester. On the application, I prioritized different issues that each location would be addressing. I chose "health" as my first choice, followed by environment and Habitat for Humanity/urban issues. I was chosen and placed on the Louisville trip!
In Louisville, we will be addressing food access issues that effect children. Here's the issue that downtown Louisville is facing: as the city has grown, the middle class has increasingly moved away from the city toward suburbs, taking all of the grocery store businesses with them. What's left in the inner city is fast food restaurants and convenience stores, leaving more low income families without healthy options and increasing obesity rates. This is especially hard for young children, especially when they grow up thinking the only places you can get food is McDonalds and KFC. Many of them don't even know what a well-balanced meal looks like.
It's a pretty daunting issue to take on, but what we'll be doing is working hands on with kids at one of the middle schools. We will be going to an area of downtown Louisville called "Smoketown." It is a predominantly African-American community that faces gang problems alongside their food access problems. Many of the kids as young as middle school-aged are involved in gangs. There are two gangs in this area. The younger kids are in a gang that call themselves the "Goonies" and the older high school kids are in a gang called the "Taliban." Both are divisions of the Bloods.
Specific activities we'll be doing are the following:
-Working on a farm to grow produce. It's called "Oxmoor Farms" and we'll be taking the kids out there to teach them about fruits and veggies.
-Making dinner at "Gilda's Club." Gilda Radner once said "Having cancer gave me a membership in a elite club I'd rather not belong to." We'll visit the "Gilda's Club" in Louisville to make everyone dinner and socialize with the visitors
-Painting a mural. One initiatives that Louisville has taken is to create corner stores called "Healthy-in-a-Hurry" which are accessible to kids in the community. We are going to paint a mural with the kids on the walls of the one closest to their middle school.
I know there are some more we'll be doing, but we haven't been given a copy of the itinerary yet. We will also have some free time and we'll be spending that at Churchill Downs and a baseball bat factory. Our accommodations for all 12 of us for the entire week came to $57! We were really fortunate to find this lodging. We're staying at a hotel built above a women's shelter and they gave us a really good deal.
To pay for the trip, everyone in the group made two $100 payments. For the rest of the fundraising, we sent "Adopt-a-Breaker" letters describing our trip and asking for donations. Our trip quickly met our goal. I feel particularly blessed and received a lot of support from my friends and family and even a few businesses in Frisco, my hometown.
Our group meets every Thursday to discuss the issues we will deal with on our trip, go over our itinerary and bond as a group. Our first two meetings were the definition of awkward, but now we are pretty close. All of the ASB groups got together for a retreat several weeks ago and each group had to perform a skit. Our skit had a rap to the beat of "Fresh Prince of Bel Air." It was pretty awesome. The trip is going to be a lot of fun.
Other groups are going to Colorado, South Dakota, North Carolina, Detroit, New Orleans, Nashville, Minnesota, and Dallas. I know several groups will be working on conservation, one with a childrens hospital, and one with Habitat for Humanity.
It should be quite the adventure! I was a little hesitant when I signed up, but now I feel like I have no regrets! Hopefully, I will be able to blog every night while we're on the trip, depending on what the internet situation is.
Again, I would like to thank everyone that donated and given their support. You have helped us reach our goal, and very quickly at that!
To learn more about Mizzou's Alternative Spring Break visit: http://asb.students.missouri.edu/
Alternative spring break is organized through Mizzou. I applied to go on a trip last semester. On the application, I prioritized different issues that each location would be addressing. I chose "health" as my first choice, followed by environment and Habitat for Humanity/urban issues. I was chosen and placed on the Louisville trip!
In Louisville, we will be addressing food access issues that effect children. Here's the issue that downtown Louisville is facing: as the city has grown, the middle class has increasingly moved away from the city toward suburbs, taking all of the grocery store businesses with them. What's left in the inner city is fast food restaurants and convenience stores, leaving more low income families without healthy options and increasing obesity rates. This is especially hard for young children, especially when they grow up thinking the only places you can get food is McDonalds and KFC. Many of them don't even know what a well-balanced meal looks like.
It's a pretty daunting issue to take on, but what we'll be doing is working hands on with kids at one of the middle schools. We will be going to an area of downtown Louisville called "Smoketown." It is a predominantly African-American community that faces gang problems alongside their food access problems. Many of the kids as young as middle school-aged are involved in gangs. There are two gangs in this area. The younger kids are in a gang that call themselves the "Goonies" and the older high school kids are in a gang called the "Taliban." Both are divisions of the Bloods.
Specific activities we'll be doing are the following:
-Working on a farm to grow produce. It's called "Oxmoor Farms" and we'll be taking the kids out there to teach them about fruits and veggies.
-Making dinner at "Gilda's Club." Gilda Radner once said "Having cancer gave me a membership in a elite club I'd rather not belong to." We'll visit the "Gilda's Club" in Louisville to make everyone dinner and socialize with the visitors
-Painting a mural. One initiatives that Louisville has taken is to create corner stores called "Healthy-in-a-Hurry" which are accessible to kids in the community. We are going to paint a mural with the kids on the walls of the one closest to their middle school.
I know there are some more we'll be doing, but we haven't been given a copy of the itinerary yet. We will also have some free time and we'll be spending that at Churchill Downs and a baseball bat factory. Our accommodations for all 12 of us for the entire week came to $57! We were really fortunate to find this lodging. We're staying at a hotel built above a women's shelter and they gave us a really good deal.
To pay for the trip, everyone in the group made two $100 payments. For the rest of the fundraising, we sent "Adopt-a-Breaker" letters describing our trip and asking for donations. Our trip quickly met our goal. I feel particularly blessed and received a lot of support from my friends and family and even a few businesses in Frisco, my hometown.
Our group meets every Thursday to discuss the issues we will deal with on our trip, go over our itinerary and bond as a group. Our first two meetings were the definition of awkward, but now we are pretty close. All of the ASB groups got together for a retreat several weeks ago and each group had to perform a skit. Our skit had a rap to the beat of "Fresh Prince of Bel Air." It was pretty awesome. The trip is going to be a lot of fun.
Other groups are going to Colorado, South Dakota, North Carolina, Detroit, New Orleans, Nashville, Minnesota, and Dallas. I know several groups will be working on conservation, one with a childrens hospital, and one with Habitat for Humanity.
It should be quite the adventure! I was a little hesitant when I signed up, but now I feel like I have no regrets! Hopefully, I will be able to blog every night while we're on the trip, depending on what the internet situation is.
Again, I would like to thank everyone that donated and given their support. You have helped us reach our goal, and very quickly at that!
To learn more about Mizzou's Alternative Spring Break visit: http://asb.students.missouri.edu/
Thursday, February 24, 2011
The Simulation Room
Just got back from my CALEB Club Meeting. We have some cool things planned for the kiddos. While we were going over everything, the woman coordinating the event, a MUSSON faculty member, gave us a tour of the simulation lab where the event will be held.
WOW! Talk about cool.
The lab is a large room with seven different dummies on hospital beds. There were a couple of nursing students there practicing. Then she showed us a separate room with an $89,000 dummy that reacts to EVERYTHING. You can give it medication, insert needles, etc. It urinates, breaths... it walks, it talks, it's almost human! (Actually, it probably doesn't walk, but you get the point). The room itself was a simulation of a typical hospital room, equipped with cameras and a one-way mirror so nursing students can go back and see what they need to work on. I also saw some homemade fecal matter.
I can't wait to use this equipment for the event. I won't be graded on it!
WOW! Talk about cool.
The lab is a large room with seven different dummies on hospital beds. There were a couple of nursing students there practicing. Then she showed us a separate room with an $89,000 dummy that reacts to EVERYTHING. You can give it medication, insert needles, etc. It urinates, breaths... it walks, it talks, it's almost human! (Actually, it probably doesn't walk, but you get the point). The room itself was a simulation of a typical hospital room, equipped with cameras and a one-way mirror so nursing students can go back and see what they need to work on. I also saw some homemade fecal matter.
I can't wait to use this equipment for the event. I won't be graded on it!
CALEB Club
Today, I will be attending an info session about volunteering for CALEB Club. CALEB Club is a science club that the University of Missouri School of Medicine hosts to teach kids in the community about what they can achieve with a higher education. It places an emphasis on science and medicine related fields. The nursing school is putting on an event to teach the kids in the club about what nurses do. We'll have booths that demonstrate how to use certain equipment, first aid, hygiene, etc.
I came across this volunteer opportunity through the Student Nurses Association. Last semester, I never made any of the meetings because of my tutoring schedule, but now that I have different hours, I'm hoping to become more involved. They put on fantastic events that make such a difference for the people in our Columbia community.
I came across this volunteer opportunity through the Student Nurses Association. Last semester, I never made any of the meetings because of my tutoring schedule, but now that I have different hours, I'm hoping to become more involved. They put on fantastic events that make such a difference for the people in our Columbia community.
Introduction
Greetings from Columbia, Missouri! My name is Sam and I'm a pre-nursing student at Mizzou.
My goal in life is to be a nurse, and not just any nurse, but a nurse that graduated from the Sinclair School of Nursing, one of the best programs in the United States. It's a fairly competitive program, admitting 55 students per semester out of 80-160.
The reason I am writing this blog is to document my journey through this process. I'm excited to share the ups and downs of applying and hopefully, once I'm there, all of the fascinating things I will learn once I'm admitted into clinicals. I will describe all of the activities I participate in, the classes I'm required to take, and, of course, the application and interview process. I will also blog about how I handle my personal life and what it's like to make yourself stand out in a school with 32,000 undergraduates.
Here's a little background information about me:
-I am a sophomore and I will be applying for clinicals next fall.
-I live on campus with my three awesome suitemates. We're a very diverse bunch: one's a journalism major, one's an engineering major, and one's an art major. We are very close and hang out all the time.
-I didn't know I wanted to be a nurse when I applied to Mizzou. I spent my entire freshman year figuring that out, and even took a career exploration class. I bounced around from history to education to pre-law, but I finally figured out that nursing was what I was meant for.
-I tutor with an organization on campus. I help kids ages 5-12 with their homework at the library. It's a lot of fun.
-I hail from Dallas, TX. I don't plan on returning.
-Eventually, I would like to get my Masters, but that will be a completely separate blog.
-I'm going on an alternative spring break this March. We will be going to Louisville, KY to help kids who have trouble accessing nutritious foods. I will be bloggging about this a lot.
-I've recently become obsessed with Twitter. My handle is slritch
-I have a job that I actually enjoy. I'm a clerical assistant for our Arts and Science's department. I make people coffee.
-And most importantly: I LOVE MIZZOU! And America.
When I decided to declare my major as nursing, I had so many questions: What if I don't get in? What will make me stand out? What are the required classes like? This is my attempt to answer these question myself as I encounter them. I want to share this experience, not only because blogging is a good way to de-stress, but because I want future nursing students to have a guide from someone who's been there, not just from the Sinclair School of Nursing Handbook.
Thanks for reading!
My goal in life is to be a nurse, and not just any nurse, but a nurse that graduated from the Sinclair School of Nursing, one of the best programs in the United States. It's a fairly competitive program, admitting 55 students per semester out of 80-160.
The reason I am writing this blog is to document my journey through this process. I'm excited to share the ups and downs of applying and hopefully, once I'm there, all of the fascinating things I will learn once I'm admitted into clinicals. I will describe all of the activities I participate in, the classes I'm required to take, and, of course, the application and interview process. I will also blog about how I handle my personal life and what it's like to make yourself stand out in a school with 32,000 undergraduates.
Here's a little background information about me:
-I am a sophomore and I will be applying for clinicals next fall.
-I live on campus with my three awesome suitemates. We're a very diverse bunch: one's a journalism major, one's an engineering major, and one's an art major. We are very close and hang out all the time.
-I didn't know I wanted to be a nurse when I applied to Mizzou. I spent my entire freshman year figuring that out, and even took a career exploration class. I bounced around from history to education to pre-law, but I finally figured out that nursing was what I was meant for.
-I tutor with an organization on campus. I help kids ages 5-12 with their homework at the library. It's a lot of fun.
-I hail from Dallas, TX. I don't plan on returning.
-Eventually, I would like to get my Masters, but that will be a completely separate blog.
-I'm going on an alternative spring break this March. We will be going to Louisville, KY to help kids who have trouble accessing nutritious foods. I will be bloggging about this a lot.
-I've recently become obsessed with Twitter. My handle is slritch
-I have a job that I actually enjoy. I'm a clerical assistant for our Arts and Science's department. I make people coffee.
-And most importantly: I LOVE MIZZOU! And America.
When I decided to declare my major as nursing, I had so many questions: What if I don't get in? What will make me stand out? What are the required classes like? This is my attempt to answer these question myself as I encounter them. I want to share this experience, not only because blogging is a good way to de-stress, but because I want future nursing students to have a guide from someone who's been there, not just from the Sinclair School of Nursing Handbook.
Thanks for reading!
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