July 11

I met with my good friend Suzette yesterday. Boy, was that fun! She and I both went through the RN Second Degree program together. It's amazing how much we have in common now that we are both working full time in the hospital(s). She is at Sibley, so it's a bit different for her. She wants to do some medical mission trip next summer sometime. I'd like that too. Or maybe in the winter, to some warm climate???

I'm working a ton this week. Mostly because so many people are gone....either on vacation/birth/marriage/quit or otherwise unavailable to work. They fired a few people upstairs, so I'm going to work there for 8 hours tonight (extra). I worked 6 hours extra on Wednesday. I think that will give me 50 hours this week. Still, it's harder to work 3 12's than 5 days with some 6 or 8 hours segments. I'm on until Tuesday morning, though, so that's not great. But then I'm off next weekend from Friday through Monday. Yippee that.

Work has begun on the whole Masters in Nursing project. I've still got to get my FAFSA filled out and a couple of things faxed to the school. I've applied for a scholarship, which would be $600 a semester ($1200 a year). I also found out that the possible match from work is $3000 a year. That would be pretty fine for this year (the tuition for one semester is $3k). But next year, it would only cover half of the tuition (still pretty fine, if you ask me!) My only concern at this point is that they might not give me tuition reimbursement while I'm still getting payback for my expenses from nursing school (BSN). But I'm not going to bring it up. I've not seen anything that says you can get both at the same time, so why point it out? If there is a policy, I'm sure they will tell me!

My first class will start Aug 1st, if I can pay the tuition by the 25th of July. Needless to say, the extra time now is a bit easier to do (work wise) and the money will be handy. Once I'm in school again, I don't think I could pull off extra hours on the floor (working in the hospital).

Well, my break from sleeping today is over, I'm going to try to go back to sleep so I can be up from 7 pm to 3 am (plus commuting time) tonight. Got to love the Critical Needs list....$50 bonus for every 4 hours worked, plus time and 1/2 and weekend night differential. Yummmm.