A Year in Review

Hello internet!
Today I was bored and decided to surf the internet instead of studying like I'm supposed to, and I ended up on my blog and realized that it's been a whole year since I blogged! And since this is kind of my journal, I feel like I need to catch up on what's been happening in my life.

A year ago I had just started my first job as a nurse on a telemetry floor. I was terrified and trying to figure out what the heck I was doing. A year of working on that floor has taught me a lot about what it means to be a nurse and what I'm capable of. I had a lot of ups and downs, but overall it was an amazing experience that I'm incredibly grateful for. I have had the chance to have so many people come into my life that have taught me so much and helped me grow. I've had patients, co-workers, and mentors that have challenged me and helped me and taught me how to love and serve my fellow-man. I've learned that nursing is what people says it is-a crazy-amazing-hardest thing ever-marvelous-terrible- roller coaster of awesome.

So after a year of working in telemetry, I decided it was time for a new challenge, so I applied and got accepted for a job in the cardiovascular intensive care unit. I just started that job two weeks ago, and I pretty much feel like I'm back where I was last year: just starting a new amazing and terrifying learning experience, and basically trying to figure out what the heck I'm doing. :) It's only been two weeks and so far I haven't had anything too crazy happen, but it's amazing how completely different it is and how much I learn every day that I'm there. This is the job that I've wanted pretty much since I started nursing school so I'm super duper stoked that I'm finally here. So far it's been a very humbling experience, but I'm thrilled to be there and so excited to learn everything I can!

So that's my life. I'm a nurse. I learn a lot, I work weekends and holidays, I'm pretty much tired all the time, I'm pretty much stressed all the time, I don't see my family or friends as much as I would like, and yet though it's really hard, it's amazing and if I could go back I wouldn't choose to do anything else :).

Our Unfortunate Culture of Self-Depreciation

You know that scene in mean girls where the plastics (who are the most popular girls in school) line up in front of the mirror to talk about all the things they hate about themselves? In the movie it’s exaggerated and funny, but really when you think about it how often do we do the exact same thing? I can’t tell you how often I hear girls talking about features they hate on themselves or things they wish they had. It’s this constant tirade of "my stomach is too big," “my hair is too straight,” “my lips are too small,” “I hate my nose,” “my skin is so shiny” and on and on and on. If a girl has curly hair she wants straight hair, and invariably one of her straight-haired friends wish they had her curly hair. No one is happy with what their momma gave them. And it’s funny how often it happens that the traits we hate about ourselves are the traits that others wish they had.
It drives me crazy.

There isn’t just one kind of beautiful. If we all walked around trying to look like Angelina Jolie how boring would that be? It would be like having a giant flower garden full of only poppies. Which might look pretty, but as we know, the poppy field in the Wizard of Oz was so boring that it put Dorothy straight to sleep.

Okay so maybe those were magical poppies. But my point still stands; one of the things that makes flora and fauna in nature so beautiful is its diversity. It’s the combination of different shapes, sizes, and colors that create some truly amazing views.

And people are the same way.
 All of us look different and all of us can rock our own kind of beauty.

Like so:

Ta da! Gorgeous.

  I know it’s so hard to be okay with how you look when we are constantly getting slapped in the face with a barrage of messages from media and from others telling us we are too fat, too thin, too short, too tall, too wrinkled, too hairy, too unsophisticated, too round, too square, too pale, too tan, too curvy, not curvy enough. And how absurd is that? No matter what we do it isn’t enough, we could always be thinner, we could always have better hair, smoother make-up, clearer skin.  And so many companies want us to feel this way about ourselves so we will go buy their anti-aging cream or their diet pills or their top-of-the-line makeup. There are people out there literally making billions of dollars off of our insecurities, so they perpetuate them in any way they can. And it’s so sad to me that we buy into it and believe them.

I’m not saying it’s bad to try to look your best. I just wish that at the end of the day we could look in the mirror and be truly happy with what we see there. I wish we could look in and see someone strong and beautiful and confident and happy. 

So here is what I suggest: I triple dog dare you to look in the mirror every morning and find at least 5 things you like about yourself. And if you can’t find five things then just sit there and keep looking till you see them, because I promise you they are there.  And after you've finished getting ready for the day and look how you want to look, quit worrying about it. Get out there and live your life and try new things and worry more about the experiences you’re having then how you look when you’re having them. Because when we are so focused on how we look, we miss out on everything happening around us. So get out there and live your life and feel good about yourself, and help other people feel good about themselves. I’m pretty sure if we were all actually able to do that, then we would be exponentially happier.

Let's all take a leaf out of this little girl's book:

If you have a few minutes, check out this talk by Jeffrey R. Holland. He talks about how there's an optimum health but there isn't an optimum size, and the importance of withstanding what the world is telling you and loving yourself as a child of God. Which you are. So next time you are feeling down about how you look, remember that Heavenly Father, God of Heaven and Earth, made you in His image.

(Even though this talk is called "To Young Women," it applies to guys too :)

Elder Holland knows what's up.

Just remember, be happy with what you have and who you are. It’s okay to think you’re pretty. It’s okay to like yourself the way you are. It’s not vanity, it’s confidence, and confidence is beautiful. 

22

Guess what? As of yesterday my age is now a palindrome, which only happens every 11 years or so. So that's pretty cool :) Also does it strike anybody as odd that the word "palindrome" is not, in fact, a palindrome? I feel like it would be cool if the names of things described the things themselves. Like an orange. It is a fruit that is orange. This is the closest anybody's gotten with palindrome:

And it just doesn't make any sense.

Anyways, Happy Sunday!

In which I provide a painstaking photographic documentation of repotting my cactus...because I'm bored and it's awesome

You know how some people have a green thumb? My mom is one of those people. She grew up on a farm and has pretty much always had some type of garden and loves to make things grow. Well unfortunately I did not inherit this particular attribute and my thumb tends to be a little more of a murky yellowish-brown color. I have a little bit of trouble keeping plants alive. Ever. So one day I said to myself, hey self, maybe you should try a cactus! They tend to be sturdy plants and if anything could withstand my horticultural ineptitude, it would be a cactus. So I bought this one and named it Lou, (as in Lou Ferrigno, as in the Hulk, because they are both green and they are both sometimes dangerous):

Ta da!

So Lou was pretty little when I bought it, but it's grown a couple inches since then, so I decided it needed a new home. I had planned on replanting it in the yard when it got a little bigger, but I decided to put it in a pot instead because I will be moving out soon and I want to take it with me. So here is what I did:

First, I bought a new pot. I found this one at Home Depot for 10 bucks and I love it. Especially since it's purple and if  you're going to put a cactus named Lou Ferrigno into a pot, it needs to be purple. (Because the Hulk has purple pants, get it? See what I did there?)  Granted it should probably be manlier, but whatever, it's awesome. 

Then I pulled the cactus out of it's old pot. Bye nasty old pot!!

For those of you concerned for my safety in regards to handling a pointy plant, worry not, I used protective equipment. 

Then i got my soil. Also found at Home Depot. Reportedly it is full of fabulous nutrients for Cacti of all kinds.

Mmmmmmm plant nutrients.

Then I popped the cactus in the pot and packed some soil around it. It was at this point that I realized that being barefoot outside was not really a good idea as I was being eaten alive by ants, so I ran inside.

Then I watered it.

Then I took pictures of it.

TA DA!!!!! The finished product. Just like pretty much everything else in my life, it's a little wonky but awesome and I love it.

And that, friends, is the true story of how my cactus came to find itself in a much more healthy-growth-accommodating living space.  Probably right about now you are wishing you had the last five minutes of your life back but personally I'm thinking that maybe I'll develop a green thumb after all :)

IS THIS REAL LIFE????

Okay you guys, this has probably been the craziest three months of my life and I'm not even exaggerating. Here's how it went down:

1. In the second week of may I graduated with my Bachelor's Degree in Nursing! I have wanted to be a nurse for as long as I can remember, and when I was in junior high (around age 13) I developed a full academic plan so I could be a nurse, and then I stuck to it and guess what? I'M A NURSE!

2. After I graduated and partied it up a little bit with friends and family I started studying for the biggest test of my whole life: the NCLEX (aka the nursing licensure exam). I took a week-long prep course and then studied for a month and ended up taking over 1,000 practice questions which pretty much drove me completely crazy. And then in June I took it and I kicked it's butt, and a few days later I had an actual bona-fide nursing license in my hands. That was probably one of the best feelings in the world knowing I had accomplished this goal that has been pretty much a lifetime in the making.

3. Once I had a license in hand it was time to get a job. After applying for about a bagillion jobs and being rejected for all of them, I went to a recruiting fair and ended up being interviewed for a Heart hospital. Let me just state here that working in a Cardiovascular ICU is pretty much my dream job so when I got the call a week later that I got a job in the Cardiovascular PCU (which is a step-down unit from the ICU so it will be the perfect starting point) I was over the moon. Especially since one of my best friends from nursing schools is orienting with me to work in the same system!! We were pretty excited on our first day :)

I feel so blessed and humbled by everything that has happened to bring me to where I am today. I am so excited for this opportunity to really learn how to be a nurse and take care of people in need. I feel like everything in my life has changed and more big changes are coming, and I can't wait!

Senioritis

So I'm going to graduate from college in 25 days!!!!! I'm not entirely sure where the last 4 years of my life went, but clearly they happened because my transcript tells me so. Some weeks when I have a paper to write or something I don't want to do I think school is taking forever, but then I look back and realize that the last few years went by so quickly and I don't feel that different from when I was a freshman just starting out. But on the other hand I feel like I'm a completely different person than I was back then. It's sort of a conundrum. But in any case, I have less than 4 weeks before there's going to be a BSN by my name and I won't have to do a homework assignment ever again unless I want to (aka unless I decide to go back to school...which is likely). Of course this doesn't really mean I'm free because I still have to spend every day from now until June studying for the NCLEX exam so I can get my license, and then I have to try to get a job, but it's nice to know that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and one day soon I'm going to be an actual bona fide nurse, which is something I've known I was going to be since I was probably six years old. It's just crazy that it's actually happening, and thankfully so far I love it :) 

Day 6: Your views on mainstream music

Ummmmmm love it. Well sometimes. I like a lot of music regardless of it's "mainstream" status, but the fact is when a song is more mainstream you hear it on the radio more and then it gets stuck in your head forever and you learn all the words and then it's your new favorite song. Which I'm fine with, whatever.
But I also like not-mainstream stuff too, I don't even know what qualifies as mainstream, but I'm assuming it's stuff like T-swizzle and whatnot.
Anways, basically I like music. Right now my favorite things to listen to are Carrie Underwood and Death Cab for Cutie, so there you go.