On My Way to RENO, NV!

To bed at 1 am last night, up at 5 am this morning. I arrived at the Charlotte/Douglas airport by 7:30 am to catch my 9 am flight out to Reno, NV for the National Student Nurses Association Mid-Year Conference. My friend, Ariel, was graciously willing to drive me to the airport so I wouldn’t have to pay to park my car at the airport while I was gone. I was glad to get there an hour and a half before my flight left so I could have plenty of time to get my bag checked, get through security and to my gate. The lady at the ticket counter was nice enough to upgrade my seat to a window seat after I told her it was my first time flying since I was 12. I met up with Donna, the District II Director for NC, at the gate. We had the same flights and decided to be travel buddies. Donna told me that her number one rule was to never sit in the back of the plane (if she could help it). We went together to the service counter at the gate and she got our seats up graded to seats right behind 1st class! And, I still got my window seat. I took tons of great pictures of the view outside my window. Our connecting flight in Dallas, TX was delayed for almost 2 hours, so we had a chance to grab some lunch in the airport. We also met up with 4 of the other members on the NCANS Board of Directors who were taking the same flight in to Reno. After lunch, four gate changes, and a 30 minute wait later, we finally boarded our Boeing 757, 3hr flight to Reno, NV!

When we finally arrived at our hotel on Friday night, we had just enough time to get our bags into the room, change clothes and meet in the Rose Ballroom of our hotel, John Ascuaga’s Nugget Resort, for the Opening Ceremony and Keynote Speaker Event. The keynote speaker was Dr. Patrick Hickey, a clinical assistant professor at the University of South Carolina, College of Nursing in Columbia, SC. He is an experienced nurse and an avid mountain climber. In an effort to raise money for nursing scholarships, he became the first nurse to climb the world’s seven summits including Mt. Everest, Mount Kilimanjaro, and Mt. McKinley just to name a few. He performed all of these climbs and made it to the summit of each in spite of his extreme fear of heights!! He continues to teach nursing students, climb and travel around the world. His presentation was titled: “Conquering Your Own Everest: Do You Have What It Takes?” He related his experience of pushing to the top of each mountain despite his fear of height back to the challenges we face as students in nursing school. Nursing school is like our Everest and when we finally reach the top and graduate we will look back over our experience and know it was all worth it. He had a slide show presentation of pictures from his travels and summits. Hearing him tell of his experiences and instances where he used his nursing skill on climbs was fascinating to me. He kept the attention of the audience throughout the entire session and his presentation left me feeling inspired and motivated to continue on my track to the completion of my nursing degree.