Nursing stuff/Life stuff

This week was nutz. I am so behind on my reading, and I have zero desire to do any in the late evening because I can't focus that well so I loose my place easily and it always seems like I get no where. It's quite bothersome. I have realized this week that I am working too much, and am being too lazy when I'm at home. I think both go hand in hand because when I work during the day I always feel more tired when I get home and tend to get very little done. I have so much to do tomorrow and I'm so glad that I was able to switch a shift because I'm sure my day would have been shot to heck. I have to do a rather short project for sociology, I have to do about a 10 page paper/project for my pharmacology class, and I also have to study for my sociology midterm...Then I have to catch up on my nutrition and I also have to think about my essay for my big nursing class. Holy sh!t is all I have to say about that.

Anyways, tonight I had a good time out with a lot of my nursing people from school. I'm an executive member of the NSA (Nursing Student's Association) and we planned a night of laser tag and pizza. All in all it was a pretty good turn out. There were about 30 people at laser tag and then a few more at the pizza part of it. We got to hear a range of entertaining nursing stories and also talked a lot about travelling. I personally have done no international travelling other than to the states. Once I'm graduated and have some loan paid off, I'm going to go to Australia for a year or so. I hear so many good things about it and how it's a real 'young people' country. I like it mostly for the climate, the beaches, the golf courses and the things to do there. Danielle and I will be married then and we will be able to both work as nurses which it great because of the dual income. I've also seen some advertisements from certain nursing agencies and the set up is pretty sweet. Basically the agent pays for the travel expenses, moving expenses and we also get a signing bonus of up to 10 grand. ALSO, they set us up in an apartment and would also give us living expenses on top of our wages. How sweet is that??? I think until we want to settle down, we will be in a few different countries to experience different cultures and just have a good time abroad. We will most likely end up back in BC somewhere. It's always handy to be by the parents when you start to have kids ;)

I bought a 19 inch LCD screen the other day and am loving it. Its just so freaking huge. I'm still debating whether to keep it or not because it does have a 20ms response time which isn't the greatest. Other than that it is an awesome monitor with a contrast ratio of 800:1 (pretty colours) and a brightness of 300. I have to turn the brightness down a fair ways while I type stuff because it can be a little hard on the eyes. But for pictures and movies the colour, and brightness are so sweet. I've only noticed slight ghosting on a very dark movie during some fast action parts, but other than that I haven't seen any on all the other movies I've watched so far. I think I'm going to watch a movie tonight yet. I should read but I'm so not in a reading mood. I'll work my arse off tomorrow and get a lot of work done then. At least that's what I'm telling myself now.

I talked to a guy that worked at an undergrad nurse tonight. His schedule was totally crazy last summer. He worked full time at the hospital plus about 20 hours of evertime a week. TWENTY HOURS! The UG wage is 23 dollars an hour (that's what he was paid anyways), so he got time and a half for that extra 20 hours a week ontop of his 40 regular hours.... so he made $920 a week before taxes, and then an extra 690 bux worth of overtime...HOLY CRAP! that's $1610 a week then minus taxes, union crap, and whatever else he was raking in about 1300 a week. There's about 16 weeks in the summer that I can work, and if I work as much overtime as he did, that comes to about 20,000 (yes, that's twenty THOUSAND) dollars after taxes! So I'm really looking forward to being a UG nurse next summer. I'm going to miss Kelowna, but I'll be here making a lot of money, and I will also get to spend the whole summer with my favourite gal. Hopefully I can do that well and then loans won't be such an issue for the next 2 years. But I look at the money I can potentially make just as a student nurse, when I'm a full fledged RN it will be almost double...It's hard to fathom having a regular career and actually making good money. Right now I'm paying an arm and a leg while I work my ass off reading and studying and working at staples making a measly 8.50 an hour...