Uggg, the slog is over.  I love being a paramedic, but I also like options.  Becoming a registered nurse seemed like the most logical step.  I graduated paramedic school in 2006 and started nursing school in 2008, which was an utter disaster.  I did great in clinical but the classroom killed me.  Part of it was switching from a medic perspective to a nurse perspective, which isn’t always aligned.  By 2009 I had failed out.  I tried to reapply to the program but life got in the way, finances weren’t there for me in 2010, so I explored other options.  I found Excelsior College in Albany, NY.  There are plenty of good and bad things said about distance learning in general, and Excelsior’s nursing program specifically.  For me, it worked.  I trudged away for 6 years, taking extended breaks and returning (the curse of distance learning being it’s easy to just slip away and let things fall behind).  But in the end, I finished the didactic portion and moved on to clinical.  At this point we had been living abroad for over a year and I needed to fly to the States several times to practice clinical scenarios and take the 3-day clinical exam.  Finally, December 2016 I tested and passed.  I had finished nursing school!  It’s a great relief, although now I’m looking to grad school for an MSN.

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My hope is to transition to a nursing role locally and gain some experience before one day heading to another adventure, or back to the States for some travel nursing assignments.  We’ll see what the future holds…