School Days

So far things are going well. I've made it through the first round of exams, save one, and I've got straight A's. Hope that holds.

We had a mentor come talk to our Nursing Concepts class. He's just a year ahead of us, started nursing school in January 2008. Nursing is his second career after retiring from the USMC after 21 years. His plan of attack was to start networking by becoming involved in some of the nursing professional organizations. I think that's a great idea, and most have student memberships that are cheaper. I think I am going to join the AACN--the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses. Since that is the field I'd really like to go into, it's a good fit I think. They also offer a scholarship that rarely gets awarded because no one applies for it!! The membership requirements state that for a student membership one must be currently enrolled in a nursing program. I think I'm going to wait for my acceptance letter, (assuming I get one,) and enroll then. My wife is already a member, so the biggest challenge I think is to get only one newsletter sent to the house each month.

For my online pharmacology class we're required to put together a 'hot-topic blog' as a group assignment. The topics are assigned and my group got 'antibiotic resistance' as our topic. Luckily for me this meshes well with my anti-drug-unless-it's-really-really-necessary beliefs. You can visit our blog at The Antibiotic Rebellion. Leave some comments please! And just ignore the fact it looks exactly like this blog--it turns out that blue and orange are the school colors! Hahah!

It's going to be a tough thing to balance my holistic beliefs with the allopathic concepts that will be presented in nursing school. For example one of the hot-topic blogs I mentioned above discusses childhood vaccinations. After doing a great deal of research, (objective research, not propaganda research,) my kids are not vaccinated. It is a frustrating thing to read a student blog like that and see how much misinformation is out there that people accept as truth. It's really unfortunate. Not to mention it can be really inflammatory--some of the information that particular blog presents paints those parents who choose not to vaccinate their children as endangering them, and as such are bad parents. Nothing could be further from the truth. But I have to be careful. There is really no need to tip my hand. I hope to keep my mouth shut unless someone directly asks me my views on the subject. We'll see how that goes. Got to stay under the radar. Grr.