Days and a few weeks have passed - finishing up my class and changes at work have put a hold on my practicum. It is time to get geared up again and get this done! Some of the barriers I have run into is an opportunity to apply for another position and of course school. Writing papers is so time consuming and my Apple laptop almost fried on me . . . the power cord started to melt at the connection. I caught it just in time and a new $80 cord fixed the issue. However, I ended up buying a spare computer so I will never be without access to the internet. So, I bought a desktop Apple - iMac. It is awesome! I installed Windows on it and it took me quite a bit of time to get it all loaded up with all my programs and settings. One more barrier - I took another Adobe class learning how to create flash files. Very cool stuff and so creative, too. But being out two more nights a week plus my painting class and homework every other night was killing me!

As for the position, I interviewed for the Cerner clinical analyst position in our IT department. This position will provide me with the skills to be a complete nursing informaticist and be a well rounded consultant later on in my career. I was pleased when the manager told me that her team unanimously voted for me to become a part of their team! Big sticking point is that the pay is less than what I am currently making. I made it quite clear that I would not take a penny less and that I feel I deserve an increase. But, I will take the same pay . . . but not less. That is for sure.

Another stumbling block was how busy my mentor and I have been. We lost contact for a bit due to her full time work and teaching nursing students. Too much for both of us this early winter. Now it is time to get back into the swing. I will need to adjust my timeline and update my practicum journal. 

A few updates - my eyes are much better since using the antibiotic drops at bedtime and I uploaded the Adobe master suite on the Mac on the Windows side. That is my creative part of life for now. I opened up my practicum files and restarted annotating my articles . . . back to my practicum now.