Gwynedd Mercy University

Date: Dec 20 2005
Major: Nursing (This Major's Salary over time)
If you are an out of state student, allow me to tell a few things that the Gwynedd-Mercy staff may not have told you. 80% of GMCs students are commuters. That leaves about 550 people living in the residence halls (a few more will be living there next year after the completion of the new dorm). Of these 550 people, at least 450 of them go home on the weekends. If you do not have a car, you will be completely stranded from Friday evening to Sunday evening. There are no activities. The "GMC Express," which usually takes you to shopping centers and the commuter train, does not run. There is no breakfast until noon or so. Dinner ends at five-thirty. If you are in Loyola, you will become close friends with ramen noodles as the only cooking equipment available to you will be a microwave. The microwave will break two weeks into the semester. Even if your microwave somehow manages not to break, it will mysteriously disappear, never to return again. The upside of this whole problem is that it leaves you about 48 solid hours of studying. In summary, make sure you sign up for the full cable package at the beginning of the year.

With regard to safety: Even with the security desk relatively close to my room, I rarely felt safe on campus. I was the only person I knew of at GMC that does not drink. Most of the people there who drink get very drunk. They are very angry drunks. They will run up and down your hall swearing at each other and bashing each others heads into the wall. Usually they will see if they can get into anyone's dorm room by jiggling the handle for about a full minute. I advise you to make use of the lock.

The security staff is mostly mean and surly and cannot be bothered to get off their asses and do anything. After Thanksgiving break I took Amtrak back to Philly and the commuter rail back to Gwynedd-Valley. When I got there I found out that the cab companies were all closed. I called every person I knew on campus that had a car, none of them were available. I did not know the way back to school, so I couldn't walk, and even if I had known the way, the road back is pitch black with no sidewalks. My only option left was to call security and ask them to pick me up. The school is a five minute drive away. Knowing that I had exhausted every option available to me, they told me that they could not pick me up. After a twenty minute negotiation with the work-study student on the other end of the line (if you read this, I'm very sorry), they finally agreed to come pick me up. It took them a half hour. When they showed up I got in and said

I'm very sorry that you had to come out, but there was no other way for me to get back.

He didn't say a damn thing. We got back to campus and he went back inside leaving me to pull my luggage out of the back without even a single word.

Onto the professors. Most of them are very nice people. My A&P professor, for example, was a great guy. The nursing instructors were a different story, especially in clinicals. They are very intelligent women and they are not shy about sharing their knowledge, which is great. On the other hand, they are also not shy about telling you and several of your classmates to

just drop out of the program and be a nurse's aide, since you don't know any more than a nurse's aide does

on the FIRST DAY of clinical in your FIRST SEMESTER of the program. Nurse's aides are smart, competent men and women who, like RNs, are doing a great service to their patients. You would think that a nursing instructor would be sensitive to this, since even RNs are often marginalized as the assistants of the medical world. Also: it is impossible to tell whether someone will make a good nurse based on whether or not they can successfully auscultate a baby's heart rate the first time they try. Baby's heart rates are very fast, roughly 120-160 beats a minute. If you've never done it before it can be difficult to get right the first time.

Now, onto the advice. This will mostly apply to nursing students.

Taking blood pressures is a difficult skill. Keep at it. Buy a blood pressure cuff and practice on your roommate.

Do not forget to wear your watch when you go to clinicals.

Stethoscopes are expensive, yes. Try to get the best you can afford. A better stethoscope means clearer sound, which means an easier time for you. Personally, I use a Littman Cardiology III and I love it.

Get good nursing shoes. SAS and Dansko are both good brands. You will be standing for eight hours on your clinical days, not to mention later in life when you get a job, so you don't want to be wearing shoes without any support.

If you intend to live in the dorms, particularly Loyola, bring Oust or Neutra-air or something along those lines. Loyola just sort of has a smell. Also, bring a fan, as there is no AC in Loyola. You will also want to bring warm clothes and blankets, as the heat is sketchy. I was only there for one semester, but it got down to the low teens while I was there and they never turned the heat on in the rooms. You may also wish to bring an extra roll of toilet paper or two, as people will take all the toilet paper from the community bathrooms, because it is funny. Har har.

Befriend the campus nurse, Donna. She's a great person and tons of fun to talk to.

The Breezeway Cafe can give you grilled cheese, mozzerella sticks, and lots of other fried or grilled goodies. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean they can't make it. Ask.