Oct092008
Filed under Band,Photos,School by Kim at 4:03 pm on Oct 09 2008
I had a lovely weekend last weekend, even though everything was all about my future career and not necessarily about living in the moment. The main thing I had planned this weekend was a trip to Johns Hopkins, where they were having an open house for prospective nursing students. Let me tell you… this was an exciting event. For the first 1.5 hours. And then I recieved the sheet which details the cost of attending.
But before I tell you about that, let me explain that JHU has the 2nd ranked Nursing school in the country, and they are quick to tell you why. The primary motivator of my attendance at this thing was the fact that I had nothing better to do & their extensive international program, but there was so much more. It is a little unnerving to hear the sort of breathless assurances that Hopkins nurses can write their own ticket; of course I think to myself can I settle for anything less than the best? Immediately before I attended this session, I was perfectly happy with the concept of getting my Associate’s at HCCC and figuring the rest out later. The other hopefuls seemed like really driven, smart people and I sure love being surrounded by driven, smart people, even if it makes me look less so by comparison.
But, I ask you, where are all these driven, smart future nurses going to get $60,000 – $80,000?? For a 13 or 21 month program? When private student loans are drying up and more doctors’ offices make due with LPNs and MAs? Anyways, that discussion was terrifying. (According to the session speaker, some of these students are former mechanical engineers, attorneys, and priests – so OK, second-career-seeking professionals might have access to more money.) On the way home from this adventure, I called my go-to friend for pragmatic advice. She set me straight and reminded my moony-eyed self that they hold these things to sell you the program. And just how much money sixty thousand dollars really truly is. All of this is food for thought, and I plan to do more research on my options somewhere between HCCC and JHU.
And then, inspired by the fact that you have to be a stellar student to be in the 25% of applicants who are admitted to the JHU nursing program, I studied my butt off the rest of the weekend. I could have made better use of my time, sure, but having the study group over was a huge boon. Come to find out, not quite huge enough, because I made some dumb mistakes on the exam, and utterly blanked on several of the lecture exam questions. I forgot about the existence of the gastrosplenic vein… I mislabeled the veins in the leg of the cat… I got a formula for cardiac output delta backwards… It wasn’t an unmitigated disaster, but it was not an A. This tells me one thing, mainly, which is that I really do require classroom time and teacher interaction to succeed. I can read things all day, but in the end interacting with others is the best way for me to learn something.
Actually, I forgot, I had a really great band practice with the (still unnamed) band where we actually did some stuff with GarageBand. It was the first time I’d tried it and we barely scratched the surface but did capture several good songwriting/improv moments. Definitely refueled my musical creativity. Most recent rejected band names: Herding Cats, Hey Girl Hey!, Platypussy (taken, of course). I am so useless for picking band names as I tend to dislike all of them.
Saturday afternoon I couldn’t stay awake long enough to read a paragraph of my textbook, so I had Jack follow me on a walk. We went down Montgomery, cut over to Prince George, and ultimately decided to come back on Main. This was our mistake, because the fun little secondhand furniture place was going out of business. Yay, new chairs! Boo, we kind of had to carry them home on our backs. I dispensed with my mod chrome and white leather chairs via freecycle the very next day. The new chairs are clearly some kind of school chairs which we should make a fun project of refinishing. Sure, when we retire someday.
I’ve been taking some photos for a 31 day challenge. Here are some highlights although there are naturally ten more cat pictures if you click through. On my list of “hobbies I wish I had more time to pursue” photography is rising in the ranks.
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