I was hired into a medical/surgical unit at a hospital on the North side and I am thrilled. It is a really tough market for new graduates. Despite a nationwide nursing shortage, it is difficult for new RNs, which require a significant investment of time and money, to compete with experienced nurses. I am extremely fortunate to have gotten this position.

And that's it. Fears: explored. Life: shared. LCD television: purchased. Rectal suppositories: inserted. Pigeons: admired. Manikins: respected. IVs: started. Patient death: experienced. Colostomy bags: emptied. Medications: administered. Babies: held. Bedsores: gross. Patients: cared for. People: helped.

Blog: completed.

Matthew Meador, RN

We are the fourth (and best) cohort of students to go through our program. I made a lot of good friends over the past year plus. With minimal sentimentality, I will say that I'll miss everyone, and trust that we are going to do some amazing things for the people we serve.


I take the NCLEX on June 24th, the final hurdle to overcome. The woman who taught the Kaplan review course called it "the ultimate feel bad experience". Awesome, can't wait.

We had our RN Licensure Completion Program today. Can't rightly call it a graduation, as no actual degree was conferred. But as I said in the welcome message (I was asked to emcee the event; I give myself a B- for this assignment), "today is a rite of passage more important than the degrees that come later". Now I just have to pass a test that will determine if I am competent enough to care for your loved ones.

We have a nursing museum on the fourth floor of the College of Nursing, complete with old uniforms, photos, a couple letters written by Florence Nightingale, and trashy nurse romance novels. The place is creepy and awesome.

Ugh, I did so well on this blog for a good amount of time. Then I got busy, and got bored with it, and my life was kind of weird for a while, and keeping up on this was the last thing I felt like doing. But it would be shameful for me not to bring closure to something that I had promised myself I would finish. So here is the abruptly constructed, somewhat disappointing and anticlimactic third act and denouement of the last 16 months of my life.


Unrelated to anything, we decided to be Three Men and a Baby for Halloween 1998. This picture was recently sent to me, and it seemed a shame not to share it.

The graffitist added more credentials.