Meet Your Mentor

New Season, New Beginning!

Hey everyone! My name is Ashley McDermott and I'm going to be your mentor for the 2012-2013 school year. I live out of state in Illinois (I'm still a Packers fan!! Don't worry!) in a town called Schaumburg. You might have heard of it, especially if you love to shop, because Woodfield Mall is located right in the center of the town. This year I'm going to a second year student or a sophomore. 

I am currently a pre-nursing student in the College of Nursing, but I will be applying for the professional program this upcoming year.  Nursing is extremely important to me and I'm very passionate about it. I became a nursing major due to the unfortunate health care of my family. When I was younger my mother had over 15 surgeries. I would visit her after school until I had to go to sleep at home and I watched the nurses do everything they could to make my mom and I comfortable. Being so young and seeing my mom so sick caused a lot of sadness for me; but, the nurses that took care of my mom made everything a little brighter. They did everything they could to make my mom comfortable and to make me smile. As i got older and realized how the nurses made a bad situation seem not so horrible for me, I realized I wanted to be able to do the same thing for other people. Therefore, I became a nursing major and am hoping to work in the emergency department. I want to work in the E.D. because the people that are coming in there to see me are, for the most part, having the worst day of their lives. I want to be able to make scary times for patients and families seem not so scary all while saving the patients life. 

The Helping Hands in Healthcare LLC is an amazing community within University Housing  that allows all healthcare majors to live together. The students who chose to live here are at a huge advantage! They are living around people who are all going through the same things; especially since everyone will be taking at least one of the same classes. Healthcare classes can get extremely stressful, especially things like A&P, but having everyone you are surrounded by going through the same emotions makes it easier. Besides, they say that the best way to learn something is to reteach it. By living on the LLC floor you can go to the people surrounding you and ask if they understood a specific unit that you don't. By them explaining it to you, they are studying by reenforcing their memory of the unit and you are learning by listening to the unit described in a new way.

Assignment from Nursing Seminar
to explore Milwaukee with other
nursing students (I'm on the left front)!

I became involved in the Helping Hands in Healthcare LLC because I want to be able to guide students and offer new ideas to them on how to further their experience with healthcare. Since freshman year I've learned about a lot of resources, internships, volunteer work, clubs, and even more that are great places to become involved in as a healthcare major. As anyone going into healthcare knows, the big thing to getting hired is EXPERIENCE! Getting involved with things on and off campus that involve healthcare will get the experience part of your resume off to a good start.

This is my first experience with the Helping Hands in Healthcare LLC.  Now looking back I would have loved to live in this LLC last year. Since I didn't get to, I want to be able to make your experience living here the best it can be! My goal is to get you guys (even more) excited about your major! I am looking forward to planning some really fun and out of the box events. I want everyone living on the Helping Hands in Healthcare LLC to leave at the end of spring semester with memories that they will never forget.

I am so excited to meet all of you and to start off the fall semester! (:

Ashley McDermott