The responses from MC Graduates from across the 30 years of the Program echoed with several themes over and over:
the support and comradery of fellow students
the quality and caring of the faculty
and of course, the hard work!
One quote summed it up nicely:
Our great study group, comradery, 8 a.m. labs, Care Plans...great instructors, unflattering uniforms and graduation!
The following comments reflect memories of some MC RN graduates:
Friendships and support from fellow students
~ Friendships that began there and blossomed since leaving
~ We all helped each other; an attribute used frequently in nursing!
~ The strong bond among most of the students
~ I remember a sense of comradery in all students as we struggled together. I remember cramming for exams in the cafeteria with all the other students
~ The wonderful friendships that were made due to a common bond - MC Nursing Program. I still have a close relationship with many of these people, most of whom are now nurses
~ The collegiality and the sense of one-ness as we suffered and succeeded
~ Encouraging each other to "hang in there!"
Faculty who lead us through the Program,
acting as role models and inspirations:
~ Miss Statts; "I'm not going to produce junk"!!!
~ Miss Statts - who can forget her introductory lecture?
~ An exceptional Staff - very supporting and encouraging
~ Having exceptionally good instructors who really made not only an impact on my nursing career, but my life
~ Instructors' willingness to always help
~ Excellent caring instructors who thoroughly prepared us for nursing
~ Professor's were so hard on us...but it paid off
~ Being taught by experienced, professional instructors
~ What characters some of the instructors were
~ Instructors who demostrated how one can be truly a compassionate instructor and nurse - always understanding and non-judgemental towards students and patients
~ The dedication and devotion of the instructors with encouragement to succeed
~ They were hard on us but enabled us to pass the boards
~ Miss Wortman's sense of humor
~ Their support, how they cared about teaching/students,
~ My instructors who treated students with respect
~ The dedicated and caring staff who helped deliver my baby.
~ How diverse and talented the staff was at MC
~ I had taken one year of nursing in 76/77, I came back in 1994. In 1976, I was 19 and immature and Irene Morelli, our OB instructor, instructed me to return to nursing after I grew up some - I did 20 years later with 4 kids and a husband...still didn't grow up!
~ An instructor who taught me about visual assessment
~ Barbara's wonderful (and greatly appreciated) assistance in the lab.
~ Support of faculty when I lost my dad
~ An Instructor who motivated students to lean and ignited a fire to learn - a role model for the nurse continuing to further her knowledge and education
~ The instructor who didn't like to be asked questions during lecture
~ Psych instructor put ASSUME on the board the first day - it stayed with me
Uniforms - an ongoing student complaint
~ Blue shoes, white aprons on the uniform, and a cap that doesn't stay on anyone's head without bobby pins
~ Getting my cap knocked sideways by the IV bags
~ Hated the cap, navy blue shoes
~ Those awful uniforms for clinicals!
~ Tucking my pig-tail braid under my nursing cap
~ No jewelry, red nail polish or perfume, ladies....and wear support hose...and put your "Big Mac" cap on TOP of your head.
~ Blue shoes, blue dress - ugly and long
And then there were clinical days....
~ Chi-Chi's margaritas after clinicals, lunches at the Greenhouse Rest.
~ Clinicals / On-Campus Labs
~ The transition from absolute panic as a first year student giving patient care to relative ease in the second year.
~ Driving my Psych classmates and instructor around St. Elizabeth's campus in my 76 Chevy Wagon
~ Experience at St. Elizabeth's Hospital (Loved it!)
~ First day of Class / How nervous I was on the 1st clinical day (Bed bath was almost an all morning event) I almost changed my mind about being a nurse
~ The great clinical experience I received from Montgomery General, Holy Cross and Walter Reed
~ Fear of making med errors
~ Patients just loved their student nurses!
~ Clinicals in so many different hospitals: WHC, Suburban, Montgomery General, Providence, WAH
~ Giving first injection to a nurse, no less!
~ First patient - couldn't get her TEDS on!
~ Fighting over careplans
~ Psych rotation
~ How frightening it was to hang IV meds!
~ Those early morning clinicals
~ Terrified of the clinical instructor
~ The simple tasks I was so apprehensive about performing that have since become second nature
~ Writing Nursing Careplans and Interactions Notes (I understand why, but horrible at the time!)
~ St. E's and the keys around my waist and the long drive to get there
~ Car pooling to clinicals
~ The faces of the patients I cared for in clinicals
Of course we remember our time in class...
~ The stress of preparing for exams and awaiting the results!
~ Dosage and Solutions Tests
~ The fire alarm ringing for twenty minutes during a final exam
~ The wrong exam being given out to students and then waiting until the correct exams were found
~ Nutrition Quizzes and after the Boards, saying "Thank you, Alice!" for egg yolks and dark, leafy green vegetables
~ Sweating through an entire semester of chemistry
~ The EXAMS, which created ulcers for many of us, but led to those extremely high Board scores we all got (which we did not believe would happen)
~ Attending Burn Lecture as a student and then returning to be the guest speaker myself
~ The 3 inch NU 101 syllabus
~ Miss Cadmus' impossible tests
~ The hard work and nursing tests! But it provided excellent groundwork for nursing itself
~ Very difficult courses, but prepared well for State Boards
~ Therapeutic Touch demonstration in Ms. Wortman's clinical
~ Miss Cadmus' highly detailed lectures - you had to use a tape recorder to keep up
~ Standing in line the night before registration to get a certain class
~ Lectures in Med-Surg that covered extensive material in rapid-fire delivery (ah! Miss Cadmus)
~ All nursing students were so focused and arrived for class 20 minutes early
~ Fun and laughter
Getting to campus and the Program and the ambiance once there...
~ Driving to the Rockville campus in the snow
~ Eating chili dogs and pizza at the cafeteria and meals on wheels
~ Friendly neighborhood, pretty campus
~ Trying to find parking at the Takoma Campus
~ Going from the old buildings to the new
~ Rode a motorcycle to school and clinicals
~ One of the founding members of the Student Nurse Association - we were considered major rebels then!
~ The charming old building where you could sit and listen to lectures and hear the birds outside the window (and raise it if you wanted to!)
Then there was that all consuming studying!
~ Endless Xeroxing
~ Before I became a nursing student, I earned a BA where things were very competitive. At MC, I remember study groups where student cooperated and helped each other - the members of our group became fast friends
~ Hours and hours of studying
~ Keeping up with the reading assignments
~ Long late night studying and knowing you could call your friends who would be doing the same thing
~ Studying for OB with band rehearsal next door (still getting a B')
~ I remember how heavy the course load was. It seemed as though I was constantly trying to keep up with the assigned reading and studying for another exam
How we felt!
~ The sense of breaking new ground, moments of high anxiety and occasional sheer terror in clinical settings
~ Exhaustion
~ Laughing a lot...at ourselves, each other. We had to make it fun so the stress wouldn't kill us. It worked!!
~ Lots of Stress
~ The struggle of the Nursing Program to incorporate the third of our class who were returning to school after success in other careers
~ The controversy accepting my openness about being gay
~ As I finish my last year of graduate school, I still think chemistry at MC was the hardest course of my life
~ It was a happy experience among a lot of great people
~ High anxiety at test time and lots of tears
~ Trying to balance the demanding nursing program and my other life as a wife, mother of four and daughter of aging parents. Hectic period of my life be am glad I did it!
~ Physically fit! Running a mile in the gym to pass
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