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.
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…
