Things I wish I knew then.

Last night I went to a round table event for the "Pre-nursing Club" at Grand Valley. The club is for mostly freshman and sophomores that are taking all of their prerequisites and waiting to apply to the nursing program. They have approximately one million questions and they are basically panicking around getting into the program, what classes they should and shouldn't take together, how high your GPA needs to be, how hard the program is, what you do in clinical, etc. A million questions. It seems so unreal that we have come so far from being these students that are freaking out. It was so weird to be the older nursing student, already in the program, and actually almost ready to finish the program. I LOVED talking to the students though. The goal of the night was to get all different types of students to come and be at the event (male students, student athletes, student parents, Honors, Second Degree, Direct Admit, and Traditional). When I introduced myself I just said I was a Traditional Student and was also in a sorority if anyone had questions about that. I didn't really think much about it until they had the students move to the person that they wanted to talk to and whole flock of girls came up to my table that were all traditional and/or in sororities. So I ended up with a table of 7 girls by myself to answer questions and just talk about the program. Luckily, I love the program and have lots of things to say. I tried to answer all of their questions and convince them that it really will get better, and the classes will get to more so much more fun and more practical and more hands on and that they just need to get through it to get there. It was very cool to pass on all of things that I've learned in these past 4.5 years and all of the things that people told me when I was a freshman and panicking. We talked about how to balance the classes and a social life and a sorority and also how to deal with the stress. They also were just really excited to hear about the program and how cool it is and all of things that we need to do. I remember how much I loved hearing about the program before I was in it because it just made me want to work so much harder to get in. I remember thinking that I couldn't WAIT to be at the CHS building all the time (the picture for this entry is the CHS building and basically my second home during the week). It just felt so strange to be sitting there giving advice. I gave the girls my email and told them to email me if they have any questions because I remember how it felt to be completely lost. I hope they actually take me up on it. Oh and I was shamelessly recruiting for ASA in the process. Obviously. Cheryl came over to my table and was talking with the girls also near the end of the night and was making fun of my recruitment director schpeel that I was giving. Once a recruitment director, always a recruitment director. But in all honesty, I feel really weird that I'm old enough to mentor younger students, but it's really awesome to pass on all of things that I wish I knew when I was a freshman.

And it also made me realize how happy I am to NOT BE IN THEIR SHOES, anymore :) I never thought I would get here, and now looking back and talking to them I remember all of the awful exams and classes and tears I went through to get here and it just makes me appreciate it so much more.

Oh, and I did not fail my exam yesterday. Despite my lack of studying, I still got a solid B. Hanging onto my A- in the class for now :)

AND this is the 75th blog entry that I have written in here! Crazy right???