Kent State University

Above is a picture of Henderson Hall. This is the college of nursing where I spent a great deal of time.

I graduated high school in June of 1993 from Stow High School. I was already enrolled to go to Ohio Northern University which is in Ada, Ohio. The school is 2 hours and 45 minutes from where I lived at the time. Ohio Northern is a smaller school and is also the college that my dad and sister graduated from. The big thing about Ohio Northern that I did not like was that there was no nursing program. I have always known that I wanted to be a nurse and this was a con to going to this school. I started to have bad feelings later in the summer about going to Ohio Northern. It was like instincts or thoughts etc. kept telling me that something was not right and I would be making the wrong choice. So I on my own called Kent State and scheduled an appointment to go and talk to some people about the nursing program and the school in general.
Now you may be asking why this is a big deal.? If you want a college with a nursing program than why not pick that one in the first place? The answer is this, my parents had a family rule for my siblings and I that we were not allowed going to Kent State or Akron. Both of these colleges are about 15 minutes away from the house we grew up in. My parents wanted us to have the whole college experience and move away and experience all of college. They felt that these schools were just too close to home.

Now I was faced with talking to my parents. I was afraid because of the fact that some money had already been paid to Ohio Northern. I did sit them both down and we discussed Kent State. The size of the school was a major concern and the fact that it is so close to home. I also was too late in enrolling into the college of nursing. So I picked a major and at the time I think it was something to do with social type work. I had to work on my electives and take a few classes that would allow me to even be considered into the school of nursing also. They finally agreed to let me go to Kent State but I was not allowed to live at home and commute. So I applied to Kent State and was accepted. Because it was later in the summer and I was late with paper work and applications compared to the other students that had enrolled at Kent State the only dorms open for me to live in where the honors dorms. The thought of living in the honors college did not excite me to say the least. I do have to say that I was very judgmental of the honors students and thought they would be very boring. I did meet a lot of great people and it ended up not being bad at all. I even stayed in the honors college my second year at Kent State.

School was never my strong suit. I struggled in high school with classes and this continued into college and the ACT. I was used to having tutors and spending more time than the average person studying for a test. I was about average or a bit higher in high school with grades but never the straight A student. If I was interested in a class I did great if it was a class like Spanish that I really cared less about it showed. The point of telling this about me is because when I would talk of being a nurse the comments for me where never encouraging. I was constantly told that going into nursing would be too hard for me, I would struggle, and I needed to find something that I may exceed in. Blah, blah, blah. What these people don’t know is that if I want something bad enough I will make it happen and you will not stop me. That is just me and my personality. I was able to reduce my hours so I could concentrate on fewer classes at one time I also would take classes in the summer. All in all I did graduate with a BSN degree from the college of nursing in May of 2001. Yes, I was in college a long time but the most important thing is I did it!
While at KSU I started in the Honors dorms and lived there for 2 years. My roommates were Erin and Elaine. We did have a fourth (I was in a quad) but she ended up meeting other people and moved out of the quad and into another room. Erin, Elaine and I were together for three years. The third year we got an apartment at Holly Park. I was not a big party person. We went to bars downtown on occasion but that type of a scene is just not my thing. (I am not just saying that in case my mom and dad read this eitherJ) To this day I am not a drinker. Alcohol and I do just not mix well together. I also do not like the taste or smell of it. We had more fun in our dorm rooms or hanging out with people in our apartment.
After our third year together we were starting to change. Erin was dating someone as was I at the time. I wanted to separate in some ways from both Erin and Elaine. This is when I moved into Dartmouth Place apartments. I moved into a one bedroom apartment……
Soon the fun stuff (meeting my husband begins...)