The Pinning

Graduation is rapidly approaching, and even though I'm intensely busy with the semester itself (being the most grueling academic and clinical experience I've ever had!), I have to deal with all sorts of other matters such as getting the nursing pin, paying for graduation pictures, how much to contribute to the graduation decorations fund, and which aerodynamic nursing cap I should wear for the school picture. Okay, maybe not the last one.

If you don't know, the pinning ceremony is an old tradition dating back to Florence Nightingale's school. Eventually each newly-founded school developed its own distinct pin. Our school has a pin. However, the cheapest version is like $70, upwards to $250 for 14K gold. And I don't particularly like the design, being something from the 60's with an Egyptian ankh and a dove. If it was an old-school English-looking gothic thing with Latin inscriptions, that might be a different story. So instead I got a cheap RN pin (that's it in the picture) which looks nicer, for all of $7. (A friend joked I should get what looks like an ""I heart blonde nurses" pin from the same site.)

The only thing I regret about not getting it is that I like my school. It's tough, but our new grads are known to hit the ground running. I've worked with a lot of nursing students and new grads, and it can be scary what you come across. I think many schools are lacking in bedside experience, basic med knowledge, basic physiology, and critical thinking. Our school is training us to enter ICUs if we choose to. So I'm pretty darn proud that I'm there. But $70-and-gonna-lose-it-in-my-underwear-drawer proud? I have to feed my kids with that cash.

As far as I know, there will be no lamps and no capping for the ladies. They are trying to figure out music for the pinning ceremony. I have no input, nor do I want it, but I hope to high heaven it's not sappy-drippy-barfy 'you're my hero' pop songs. I don't know what I'd have—the Star Wars imperial march or something. Didn't Tchaikovsky have a slave march? Those would have been good as soundtracks to nursing school itself...but graduation, I have no idea. "I'm Free" by the Violent Femmes.