"Dis-Oriented"

So what can I tell you about last week's 3 day long orientation. Let me see, where do I start? There was a lot of paperwork, a lot of standing in lines for things like drug tests, notaries, registration and payments, trying on uniforms, having badges made, and there was a lot of "I cannot believe we have to hear THIS again" mumbles from me and my two guy pals I always hang out with at such meetings (they're a hoot) and these mumbles were in re: to the several people that came from various clinical sites to tell us about HIPAA and make us do even more paperwork on patient confidentiality (swearing on Bibles and such) and you name it. For the most part it was all good, I mean we had plenty of laughs and it truly was exciting to finally be in that building and in those rooms and be able to park in the nursing student parking lot w/ the big spaces! The rest of the school's parking, if you can squeeze in and out of your car without hitting the car next to you, it's been a good day. There were about 80 of us in the big room though and the director told us on day 2 that they had nearly 700 applications and by the time deadline came around about 170 completed files for the RN program to go through and only 60 of us could get in to the RN program (the rest are delayed or LPNs) and to give ourselves a pat on the back for our hard work to have made it to this point, so despite the exhaustion, I kept that in mind and I think it will stay in mind each and every day until graduation. I have worked REALLY hard to keep the grades and sanity to have made it this far and now it's a new stage of the game but along with it comes the fun stuff, too, like clinicals! I cannot wait for L&D rotations. Cannot.

Textbooks are outrageous. I mean seriously, highway robbery. I priced all the books, both required and optionals, through our school's bookstore online and it was over $1k just for this semester. I took my penny-pinching fingers online this morning and got all of it, even the optionals, for less than half of that. Luckily many of the books I will be using more than just this semester and the upcoming ones are not nearly as bad! I think right out of the gate, it's just way more expensive b/c there is so much to buy. Oh, and, hahahaha....I need to get a Palm Pilot. That will just have to wait a month or so. The awesome part is having it at clinicals (and on the job any other time) the software we're using for them has about 8 textbooks of references for drugs, dosage, dictionary, everything imaginable at your fingertips which helps you cover your butt and doesn't put a patient in danger so I do love that.

The light at the end of the proverbial tunnel is that our nursing fundamentals/lab instructor was telling us about the nursing shortage and how, financially, that will work to our advantage. She was just contacted by a staffing firm needing any RNs interested to work 3 12-hr shifts in California; fly you out on Thurs, send you back Sun, pay for your room and food while there, and the hourly pay made us all drop our chins in our laps and look at each other and ask if we'd heard it right. I've been interesting in traveling jobs anyway, even if it was one weekend a month, now I know it'll be something I will look into after all the financial stresses of school!

It's been a good weekend. Kids are good although a little allergy-sick but Ty went to a b'day party last night and Ev and I had a little date while he did that which was really nice! I've done stuff around the house and even made a blanket. It's one of those fleece ones you do that are double-sided and measured off, cut, tied into fringes all around...it's Bama of course. It's a collage of icons on one side and houndstooth on the other. I worked on it all day. I'll snap a fotog of it to share soon. I'm too tired to get up and do it right now.

With that said, I'm signing off for the evening! Hope to see my local gal pals at Superior Grill this coming Thurs night at 6pm for DDC! I'll be there a bit later b/c I have lab and will have to change out of scrubs and get cute in the car or somewhere before I get there!

Hope all of my adoring fans reading this have a great week. I have algebra tomorrow morning at 8am. I think you all know me well enough to understand how thrilled I am over it, too. *gag*