Day 1, a year later

Today is the first day of the last quarter of the first part of my MEPN program, which got off to a not very promising beginning. To start with, I dumped my freshly brewed shot of espresso into a cup full of coffee grounds instead of the clean mug. Then I fell off my bike on the way to class. The website for my class listed the wrong room - actually, there were three different rooms listed in three different places - so I was late and the class itself was boring and offensive (ironic for a cultural sensitivity class). By lunchtime at least two of my classmates were in tears and I was just about ready to join them when I discovered I had another three hour class in the afternoon. Which also had multiple wrong rooms listed and took a while to sort out. After class I ran to the gym and promptly pulled a muscle in my shoulder.

However. It's hard to believe that just a year ago I started this nursing program. There was a welcome dinner for the new class tonight - just like the one I attended last year - and meeting the incoming students was a great reminder of just how far I'd come. I was assigned a 'buddy' to be available for and check in with throughout the year and she was telling me about how she couldn't sleep the night before because she was worried she'd forget her stethoscope on the first day of class. It was great to be able to tell her that those feeling really would go away, she really would begin to feel like she knew what she was doing and that she could be a nurse someday. While delivering this little speech, I realized that I have just one more quarter, that I will manage to get through my gross classes and survive clinical and learn lots and be an RN this fall. And it didn't hurt to think that two months from today, I'll be on a plane en route to Kenya.