Children's National Medical Center

CNMC, as it is affectionately abbreviated, is the hospital that I am doing my Child Life Internship at until August 21st. So far so good. The first week and three days was orientation, boring.

I started on my first unit on Friday. The neuroscience unit is where I will be for the next six weeks. Currently I am pretty intimidated, I hope that I am able to live up to how good it seems everyone thinks I am. This is going to be a challenging unit due to the nature of the population. Many patients will have physical limitations and developmental delays. A lot of the patients have seizures, which kind of scares me. I am looking forward to learning everything I can for the next six weeks, after which I will start my next rotation, most likely on the medical care unit working with patients 0-11 years old.

I am also working on getting Child Life into the NICU, especially since they just moved the precious babies up to the NICU's new home on the 6th floor of the new inpatient East Tower. I am really excited about the prospect that the NICU holds. I hope to end up as a Certified Child Life Specialist working in a NICU somewhere someday...

I will update more as it happens. Probably will come in one-week batches :)

Here is a great slideshow about CNMC

Since Graduation

The week before graduation mom, dad and I headed to Fort Walton Beach, FL to relax before graduation and the start of my internship in DC. The pictures from that wonderful trip are all on dad's laptop, so they'll have to come later...

The morning after graduation mom and I loaded up my car and drove to DC. We took two days to drive the nearly 22 hours, we spent Saturday night just outside of Nashville and made it to my aunts house on Sunday night. I started my internship the next morning.

Here are some pictures from the road:

(there aren't many because we didn't have time to make it tons of fun...)

I plan on making it a much longer and much funner trip back to Texas, then to wherever it is that I will be going to work!

Graduation

Wow, it actually happened. I made it to graduation from Baylor University. I used to think that it was never going to happen, and now it's been two weeks since it did. Weird.

Here are some highlight photos from the event:

See me walking in :)

There I am walking across the stage:

After the ceremony the photoshoot extravaganza began

There's the proof from the magic little green tube!!

Yikes

So, I know it's been quite a while since my last post, and it will probably be a week before the next exciting one.

This week is finals week and I have the most major final of my college career on Friday--Medical Terminology. I've been studying for about three hours a day for the last four days, and will continue to do so till Thursday, when I will study all day. On Friday I take that final, my last undergraduate final, at 2:00. Then I am moving out of my apartment to head home. Saturday me and my lovely parents are heading to Fort Walton Beach Florida to celebrate my 22nd birthday and graduation. We will get back Wednesday, two days before Graduation. I will walk the stage that Friday afternoon and Saturday Mom and I will begin the drive to Virginia. We'll arrive Sunday evening and I start my internship that Monday, the 18th.

So I promise to have tons of pictures soon, but you'll just have to wait for them :P