Stephen Carter McCollum:  

Ok, I'm going to sum up a whole lot in just a little bit of words... After High school I tried college and well, at that time in my life it just wasn't the right time. So what's a guy to do... hummmm...I joined the army and became a scout. I loved it and I was good at it but looking at the pay check at the end of the month can be depressing sometimes. All my army buddies know what I'm talk'in about. So I figured I would try my hand in the civilian world once again, which can be kinda scary after being a part of the military family. I'm still not sure how or why I decided to pursue becoming an RN but thats what I decided to do. The military had made me tough but working from 10pm to 5am and then going to school from 8am to 2pm about killed me. I was working in Jacksonville and going to school in Lake City. I did it for about a year and ate vivarin and nodoze like life savers. When I finally was accepted into the program I realized that i couldn't work anymore. Thanks to the army I was able to just focus on school. (kinda sounds like an army commercial, huh?) I graduated in 1998 and stressed about taking the state board exam for a couple months, then when I did take it, I stressed for a couple weeks after waiting on my results. So I am an RN, I was already a staff nurse with 3 LPN's and 30 patients under me in a med/surg environment, which later I found out was illegal to do to a nurse graduate but at that time I was just glad to have a job. In another hospital a year or so later I was on a code team and the team was working a patient, during these procedures we...Expand for more