'Round and 'Round the Mulberry Bush

Well, usually I like to take the weekends off Blogger-wise, but I've just been a chatty Cathy during this one.

Today I had an informational meeting with someone who graduated from my alma mater's second degree nursing program. I found her on the alumni database a few weeks ago and e-mailed her; she was eager to meet and discuss her career.

I must say it has been encouraging that all the nurses and nursing students I've spoken with really love it. When I was deciding whether to jump ship with law school and was making contact with many lawyers to discuss the field my conversations were really mixed. Some people told me that they really liked it, some were teaching law because they hated lawyering, and one woman even told me that she realized she hated it after three years but got "stuck" because her parents were sick and she needed to support them.

So far I've spoken with one undergraduate nursing student, one accelerated BSN student, and two nurses. I've received glowing reviews from each. The woman I spoke with today highlighted the flexibility of nursing: being able to move wherever you need to and find a job, the luxury of changing specialties (ie, switching from cardiac ICU to oncology), the opportunity for continued learning and never getting bored, and the work weeks (3 days a week... although it is for 12 hours).

She was extremely supportive and said I could shadow her or any of her friends if I'd like to. She also offered to pull some strings for me in admissions. All in all, I'd say it was a good meeting. I'm glad that I found and contacted this woman. I explained that I wasn't ready to jump into anything just yet, and there are a lot of things standing in my way: GRE's, where the hell am I living next year or the year after, many prerequisite courses, and figuring out where the income will come from. These things aren't deal breakers, it just means it's going to take awhile to get there if that's what I decide that I want.

But, more awesomeness in my favor, I'm going to be getting some free career counseling in the next few weeks. Boyfriend will also be participating in this, and I think it will be some excellent and much needed help in the right direction.

In other news, boyfriend bought us a Lonely Planet: USA travel book. We're working towards planning a vacation next summer and we'd like to see some states that we've never seen. While he's been to California, I have never been west of Tennessee... yeah. We're looking at Colorado right now, but I'd love suggestions, of course.