So I just realized a little post here is overdue. February is going by so quickly. I can't even believe it. I'm half way through the rotation part of my residency and have only 3 more units to go, and when I went to pick up my first paycheck today (BIG event in my life...biggest paycheck I've ever gotten), they were already interviewing for the Summer residency cohort! Crazy.

So far, I've been to the renal dialysis and transplant floor, ACE (acute care of the elderly...basically a general medicine floor that gets most patients over 65), and myelosuppression. I still have a cardiac stepdown unit and 2 different general medicine units to go. Unfortunately, I will be spending time on those units on the night shift. The upside is that I will get paid a little more, but I'm anticipating it feeling like I'm living in a constant state of jet lag. I'm kind of excited, though, to see how night shift is versus day shift...will be a new experience. I put up the new curtain I bought myself that is supposed to block out 99% of light, so hopefully that will help me sleep better. I LOVE that my apartment gets so much natural light during the day, but for this situation, not so great.

Let's see...now that I have a full time job, I feel like my life has gotten a lot more boring. But maybe it's always been that way and I'm just noticing now, but anyway...I'm having a blast so far. I have weekends off (for now), so Matt and I have been hanging out a lot (and other friends, too!). I should probably make more of an effort to hang out with other nurse residents outside of work/class, because they are awesome people but it's hard when I don't see Matt very often anyway. Also, I have no idea who I'll even see once we get matched to our units. Anyway, since the 31st...hmm...hard to write down everything exciting I've done. I'm trying to remember, because I want to go back and look at this and remember all the experiences I've had. Kind of like my study abroad journal...only I'm not living in as cool of place as Vienna. I applied to the Nurse Education Loan Repayment Program recently, and I REALLY hope the lovely government will help me out with my loans in exchange for taking care of my lovely patients. A lot of Matt's friends from Divinity School, Kendra, Jaye, and I watched the Superbowl together. We also walked around Centennial Park a little that day (it was gorgeous...like today).

The next week, I attempted (yes, only attempted) to go to a Zumba class. However, Nashville got 3 inches of snow and flipped out. I got one block in 20 minutes and decided the traffic was not worth my time. The next morning, although there was no snow overnight, the roads were still not cleaned off and were pretty much the scariest roads I've ever driven on. I had to stop at one of the 1000 stop lights on Hillsboro Pike (of which none are synced up just right), aaaand I couldn't get my car to start moving again. FREAKED me out, and after a hysterical call to my mom, I lived and was only 5 minutes late to work. Oh, the joys of being a nurse and having to come into work even when other working adults get "snow days." I look forward to the day I get to sleep on an air mattress in the hospital for the next day's shift...some of my friends in the program did that!

Let's see...Matt and I had a very chill Valentine's Day. He bought me a box of chocolates (because he knows I always like having chocolate around), and we just watched TV and ordered a couple pizzas. We have GOT to stop this eating an entire pizza for ourselves thing. V Day was kind of lame, since it was on a Monday, so we went to an Indian buffet the Saturday before. It was actually pretty good, and we went to the employee celebration at the Vanderbilt women's basketball game the next day. It was nice. They gave us a free t-shirt (made me laugh hysterically when it was a t-shirt from the event they had in 2009(!)). We got a free bottle of milk (?) and a popcorn and soda. The game was going pretty well, but apparently it went downhill when we left, because they had a 10 point lead when we left and they lost. Oh, I also went to my friend from DePauw's (Allyson) choir concert before the game. It was cute...songs from musicals. I wanted to check them out and see if I would be interested in maybe auditioning and singing a little bit again. Speaking of music, I bought tickets for me and a few friends to see Spring Awakening next weekend!! I am beyond excited, and I cannot believe I am FINALLY seeing it. I hope it doesn't disappoint!

If you're wondering how I am liking the floors, it's difficult to say. We only get 2 days on each unit (granted, no other program does this and I am grateful for this aspect of the program), but it's difficult to gauge if I will fit in and like it there. My preceptors have for the most part been AMAZING. I am so impressed with Vanderbilt, and I think I will love working there. The patient to nurse ratios are a lot better than some places I've seen, and the units seem to have excellent team work. I don't want to go into too much detail here about the different units, because who knows what will happen on match day. All I know is that I will have some difficult decisions to make when ranking them...

2 "firsts" for me today: my first parking ticket (by the way, Beth, a friend from nursing school got some coffee with me today on her way to Auburn to visit her son...she's so great. I missed her), and my first paycheck! Woohoo!!

First Day of Work!

So before I talk about how my first day of orientation at Vanderbilt went, I wanted to talk about this crazy weekend a little bit. Some of the girls from the divinity school and I went to a town south of Nashville to do a little shopping. When we got downtown, it was a little crowded, but we didn't think anything of it. We went in all the cutesy (and expensive!) shops, and when we came out later, the entire street was blocked off. Apparently it was a big day for Franklin, as their theater that first opened in 1937 is being renovated and it was the day they were going to light up the sign! We had fun snacking on all the free food, popcorn, and champagne. However, when it came time to leave, we realized we were very close to the theater and barricaded in. All of a sudden, everyone had a very strong opinion on how we should get out of there and were either very angry at us for making them move to let us leave or rushed to get a cop to help us out of there. Oy. It turned into an interesting day, and it was a good time!

So today I had orientation at Vanderbilt. It was very organized, and everyone seems very nice. It really seems like they want our transition to be as smooth as possible. I had to get my blood drawn for a titer for chicken pox, so that was a little scary. I'm such a bad nurse...I dread blood draws...even though I know the entire drill! It's ridiculous. Anyway, I got my ID today, and it made me feel very official :) Can't wait for more orientation tomorrow and talking to more cool people!

This is my last Friday off!! Haha...that's what I'm telling myself every day this week. I start working on Monday! I can't believe it! I've known I've had this job since November, but it's actually going to happen finally! I'm super nervous, and I hope all the nurse residents are nice and we have a good community. I was looking at all of my health insurance stuff the other day, and I made big girl decisions like choosing my dentist. Eeeee! The only thing I need to do is get my diploma from Goldfarb and send in all my stuff to get a Tennessee nursing license. I got my Missouri license number today, so that was exciting.

So this paragraph is especially for Olivia ;). The Adventure Science Center was a lot of fun! I especially enjoyed the grossology body exhibit (did you know we replace the snot in our noses every 20 minutes?) and the space exhibits. They also had animatronic dinosaurs there which made me think of the science center at home :) One neat part was climbing up a tower to see the Nashville skyline and then sliding down a big slide to get back down. I, however, had to face this alone as Matt and Kendra are afraid of heights!! They gave us drink tickets, and we ate mini tacos, nachos, and cheese cubes so it was a fun time.

I had my first dinner guest over on Wednesday. Miss Jaye (omgsh, I think that's the name of the cross dressing man on ANTM) came over, and we ate pasta and salad (I'm sure my next meal will be more complicated. I know Karina right now is like, yeah right). We had fun, and she introduced me to one of my new tv show obsessions: Pushing Daisies. How did I not find this before? Especially since Cheno(Kristen Chenoweth)is on it...

Matt's taking me out tonight...to Cici's. We've just been craving it, and I still like saying he's taking me out even when the place is, well, a pizza buffet. It should be fun, because it's in a part of the city we haven't seen yet and then we plan on going to the Nashville Night Market afterward. Tomorrow, I might go shopping with Matt's div school (they think they're cool for calling themselves that) friends. I'm pretty happy with how my last weekend before working is going to pan out :)

So this week is my last week off before I start my big girl job (super excited to get a paycheck!), and I'm celebrating that fact by watching an ANTM (America's Next Top Model) marathon. Tonight, I'm going to the Adventure Science Center in Nashville with Matt and a new friend in the nurse residency program. It should be fun! It's for 21+ only, and you get a couple drinks and to play on the equipment with no kids around, lol. I'm looking forward to it.

Since I have passed the NCLEX (!), I have been selling off my books on half.com. I only have one left to remind me of that torturous year. It actually wasn't torture. You guys know I'm a nerd and love school and can't wait to go back fro my Master's...although, watching Matt go through all of this reading and papers, I begin to wonder...

I got a library card yesterday, so that makes me feel more like a Nashvillian. I checked out the first season of Pushing Up Daisies, because my friend said it's really good. I also checked out a whole bunch of exercise videos, because I'm hoping I'll be more likely to exercise if I can do it in the comfort of my apartment. We shall see...so I thought it was interesting that everything is self-checkout at the library and that it was the way of the future, but Matt told me Kirkwood's library has done that for years :P

Matt got me this nursing calendar for Christmas, and since I'm starting my job as an RN soon, I thought it would be fitting to share some of the quotes from the pull away calendar that amused me:

It's entitled "The Advantages of Working Nights, Sleeping Days, and Never Having Two Days Off in a Row."

-Avoid rush-hour hassles and traffic jams, plus be able to find great parking spots.
-You can use your work schedule to get out of almost any undesirable invitation.
-You'll save money that you might otherwise have spent on weekend outings, holiday gifts, or social affairs that you're unable to attend.

I love it.

NCLEX...check

Hello everybody! I'm back after a short hiatus where I crammed for the NCLEX (the test for RN licensure). I took it yesterday in Brentwood (a cute suburb of Nashville), and I really hope it went well. I may know by tomorrow what my results are if 48 hours includes non-business days. Of course, they require to you pay a fee before you can get your early results. It's kind of stupid, because it's a completely computerized, multiple choice test, and they could tell you the results right away. Anyway, I'm trying not to think too much about it. I wasn't nervous during the test (even when they were giving me a palm vein scan and taking all of my fingerprints). Matt said he got a pat down to make sure he had nothing on him, so at least I wasn't subjected to that! They also video and audio recorded us during the test, so it's intense. I wasn't nervous until after the test, because I was thinking, it's all out of my control now. I thought about how I didn't even have one math question on the test and how I couldn't even recall many specific questions. I'm distracting myself this weekend from obsessing about the test by having fun :)

As my Nanny reminded me on the phone yesterday, I only have one week from Monday until I have to start being a working adult. I'm sad all this fun is going to come to an end...well, hopefully not all the fun will come to an end. Since my last post, I went to a spinning class with my friend Jaye, and it kicked my butt! Even the middle aged ladies in the class had more energy than me. Last night, Matt and I went to a Mexican place in Nashville everyone says is amazing, and it was really good! It's called Taco Mamacita, but it's not traditional Mexican at all. I think one of my tacos had mangos in it...the guacamole was amazing. Matt and I watched Persepolis (which is a beautifully made movie about the Iranian revolution), and we're going to a concert and comedian at the Divinity School tonight. Should be fun!

If you haven't seen yet, I have pics of my apartment up on facebook. I love it. I love how the sun shines into my apartment during the day, and I don't even have to turn on any lights. I don't think I will like it so much when I have to sleep during the day. I also don't like having to kill my own bugs. They make me want to cry. At least they aren't crickets, though.

Right now I'm enjoying my time being lazy and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer...oh how I miss you 90's. I'm going over to the little gym my apartment has later.

I forgot to tell you some exciting news (at least to me!). So when I was a senior at DePauw, I bought tickets to go see the musical Spring Awakening with my roommate and to come home and everything from Indiana that weekend. Well, I ended up having a concerto competition that weekend and had to sell my ticket to a friend. Well, guess what!! Spring Awakening is coming to Nashville next month!! I am so excited about it! There's one good thing about moving to a new city...I thought I would have to wait until the tour came back to St. Louis in a bajillion years. I'm hoping to buy my tickets soon!

Free Museums and Fun with Friends :)

Matt and I ventured over to the Country Music Hall of Fame yesterday, and it was pretty fun! I was upset at first when I saw the sign saying you had to have a valid Tennessee license to get in for free, but it ended up working out after some explaining of my situation. There was some neat things in there. The inside of the building with the foyer and the staircase is cool, and they have a ton of stuff in there. It was fun, because I like more modern country and country/pop/rock crossover stuff, and Matt likes more of the old country like Johnny Cash and all that jazz (not the genre, haha). You could spend a lot of time in there. I enjoyed the 24 karat gold plated piano that once belonged to Elvis and also a car painted with crushed diamonds. There was also someone's car that had handguns attached to various parts of the car...weird. Anyway, I got to see Taylor Swift's pretty dress she wore at the CMA's in 2009. I would put pictures up, but there was no flash photography, and my pictures are blurry. I was thoroughly disappointed at the lack of Dixie Chicks anything in that museum. I asked a volunteer about it, and he smugly said they used to be there, but not anymore. I don't think anyone has the right to try to erase something from history just because they don't like it. Get over their ideology, people.

We also went to the Frist Center for the Visual Arts (also free) with Jaye and Peter. The building is really cool, and it was a fun time. There was an Impressionism exhibit, and while I know nothing about it, it seemed thorough and well done. Everything I learned about art history was in Vienna, so I only know about Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical artwork...and definitely nothing about French art, because Vienna had a rivalry with their royalty. Oh well. I'll wait for an exhibit on that!

Matt and I went to a Presbyterian church today. It was kind of cool. They have a house where board young people out of college while they volunteer for a year at a nonprofit in Nashville and figure out what they want to do with their lives. One of the people that did the program actually studied abroad with me in Vienna. Small world, huh?

I have now taken pictures of my apartment. The problem is that my cord that connects my camera to my laptop isn't work, so I'll have to wait until Matt can upload the pictures to his computer. Bummer.

I got my fingerprints digitally today. I did it back in St. Louis as well, and it was in this super sketchy building in a little room where the guy insisted on shutting the door. He wasn't very nice either. This was a totally different experience. I'm beginning to wonder if maybe the people in Nashville are nicer. Here's hoping. People walk by me on the street and smile, and I'm like, what are they smiling about? It's kind of nice.

So Nashville has a new mayor. His name is Bill Haslam. I know absolutely nothing about him. All I know is that as part of the festivities for the weekend, many of the museums in the area are free tomorrow. I'm really excited for that. I'm trying to plan a trip to the Country Music Hall of Fame, Tennessee State Museum, Belmont Mansion, and the Frist Center for the Visual Arts to see some impressionism. I know this is a little ambitious, but I'm excited.

Here's a little tidbit about Nasvhille i found online today: The other conspicuous element in Nashville's make-up is religion. There are over seven hundred churches, more per capita than anywhere else in the country...I guess I should welcome myself to the Bible belt ;)

Here's a little realization that makes me freak out every time I think about it: I'm taking the NCLEX one week from today! Ahhh!

Also, here's a little information from a recent Vanderbilt Nursing Newsletter:

WELCOME NURSE RESIDENTS - WINTER 2011

95 Total Nurse
Residents

15% ASN
80% BSN
5% MSN

Pediatrics: 25
(3.58 GPA)

Adult Critical Care: 43
(3.60 GPA)

Adult Medicine: 19 (that's me!)
(3.50 GPA)

Adult Surgery: 6
(3.58 GPA)

Psychiatry: 2
(3.71 GPA)

33 States

54 Nursing Programs