3 weeks

3 weeks! In 21 days I will be graduating with my BSN from USF and will (probably) be starting a whole new chapter in my life. It seems weird that 2 years ago it felt like an eternity until graduation and now that its here I feel like it went by very quickly. Graduation is exciting but also scary for me at the same time because it marks the time when I'm supposed to be fully responsible for myself and ready to be apart of the "real" (aka working) world. But right now I'm not sure what I want to do with the rest of my life. Nursing leaves the opportunity for working in many different areas like clinics, hospitals, surgical centers etc but right now I'm not exactly sure where I want to work, where I want to live, or what I want to do for the rest of my life. I'm currently doing preceptorship on a medical floor in a Tampa hospital but I don't think thats what I want to do for the rest of my life. Most of the nurses are overloaded with 6 patients and often have a hard time taking students because they don't have enough time to accomplish what they need to during their twelve hour shift without having a student there. I don't want to be that nurse. I want to enjoy what I do for a living and want to be able to share it with others. Hopefully I will figure out what I want to do with my life and be happy doing it.
Anyways, as school is coming to a final end for me I am hoping that this new chapter in my life will be full of adventure, awkwardness, and beautiful-ness <3

Panama!

So right now I am in Panama!! This trip has been an amazing experience and one that I will never forget. I have been here for 2 weeks already even though it feels I just stepped off of the plane yesterday. I am here for Community Health nursing and am really getting to experience the full essence of community nursing and the reasons why community nursing is so important. In the clinics we have been working at, the nurses go out into the community to check on patients and give them vaccines etc. The nurses also perform PAP smears, give vaccines, assess child growth and development, and they go into the elementary schools to teach children about different topics (the day I went the nurse talked about STD's etc). As a whole Panama is more community focused than in the US. We are staying in homestays we people in the community so we are immersed in the culture and community of Panama. The family we are staying with is amazing, they are so kind and really make us feel welcome in their home.
This experience has really made me thankful for things that most people take advantage of in the US like AC, a warm shower, a washer AND a dryer :) but at the same time there are things that I will miss in Panama like the best and freshest fruits EVER, getting a full meal for under $3 (at the cafeteria at the universidad its $1.25), our homestay family and the great sense of community Panamanians have. Overall, I have loved my experience so far in this beautiful country and the memories I am making here will stay with me forever :)

Peace, Love, and Tie Dye

One of the things that I really enjoy doing is making tie dye! It's fun, messy, fairly easy to do, and you never get the same exact pattern twice. That's what I love about it. Everytime you twist up a shirt and rubber band it together it will always be a different pattern than the last time. No two shirts will turn out the same. Whether it be the design, the colors, or the saturation level of the dye, every shirt will turn out different. In many ways it reminds me of how God creates us, each an indivdual. We start out as a plain white t shirt, then God molds us into the design He wants, adds the colors He wants and voila! a unique individual person. The only difference is that we don't know how our tie dye is going to turn out but God always knows what His tie dye is going to be like. And although making tie dye is time consuming and can be very messy at times, it makes me happy just like it makes God happy to mold and create us <3

Failing

My biggest fear in life is failing. Not just in big ways either, but in the small ways that no one really notices. Today during simulation we had the opportunity to intubate our simulator patient and it took me a few tries before I was finally able to position correctly and get the tube in. Even though it was my first time attempting to intubate and even though nurses do not intubate patients in real life because it is "out of our scope of practice" I still felt like a failure for those few seconds that I had to try and reposition and reinsert the tube into the simulator patient. I'm not exactly sure why I have this fear and why I feel this way even when most people wouldn't.

Failure when it comes to my future is probably the biggest part of this fear for me. I have a plan for what I want to happen in my life, not necessarily specifics but generally things I want for my life. A few of those things are: I want to get married and have a family, I want to get through nursing school and pass the NCLEX the first time around, I want to find a job after graduation that I will love and I want to be happy. These are some of the bigger things in life that if they don't happen I will feel like the biggest failure on the planet. I realize that many people live completely fulfilled and happy lives without several of these goals but I don't think I'm one of those people. To put it simply, when it comes to life goals I won't settle, I won't let myself settle for anything less than what I want because that would mean failure and I don't know what I would do if that happens.
Now that I've gone off on a tangent, I guess what I'm saying is that my greatest fear in life is failure by my standards. I'm not sure if that makes any sense but oh well.

Awkwardly Beautiful

When people ask me about myself I really don't know what to say and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. My life is pretty much an open book and I have the tendency to tell people more than they want or expect to hear. For instance, when creating this blog it asked me what I wanted to name it and I couldn't think of a name. That may have been due to my lack of creativity but also partly because I'm not completely sure where to start or what to talk about. I guess for now I'll start here...I'm a Nursing major at University of South Florida in Tampa. I am going to Panama over the summer for Community Health and will graduate in December, both of which I am really excited about! Outside of school, I have amazing family and friends and I absolutely love them. I have spent the past 2 summers on Team as a camp counselor at a camp that has meant so much to me throughout my life, I talk about it often and find that some of my closest friends are the ones I met at this camp. During my first summer on Team, I realized how beautiful my life is and how beautiful the people in my life are, I know this may seem very cheesy to many people but it's the truth. On a side note, I have discovered through the years that I am incredibly awkward and that no matter how hard I try to not be awkward, I still am, so I stopped trying a long time ago.
So that is the shortened version of my life for now... pretty much awkwardly beautiful <3