Yes, you do go to school to become a Paramedic

I was nervous. I graduated high school in 2003 and almost six years later I’m still in school without a college degree. My initial major was Nursing – straight out of high school I went to Colorado for that particular program spending two years there I found out that students making a 4.0 GPA were on a waiting list, so I came back to Texas to spend another two years in San Antonio adamant to get into their Nursing program. Come to have it my GPA was unable to qualify for their program and I don’t know how I came up with the information, but I eventually decided I’ll major in EMS to bridge over towards my goal of becoming a nurse. That of course was my initial goal.

I chose Abilene TSTC because it was only 2 ½ hours away from my hometown and they would accept most of all my transfer credits leaving me with just the EMS program classes needed. But since I’ve been in the EMS program the thought of once wanting to become a nurse has left. I believe the nursing pursuit left after the second month of my first EMT-Basic semester. Sure I may probably come back to nursing eventually, but at the moment it has to be EMS. It’s silly to think that with my initial goal, I planned on not building relationships with my peers – just wanting to do my time, pass, and leave. But of course it’s just not possible.

In the beginning of my Basic class we started out with over 20 students, two, including myself, will be graduating from that initial class as a paramedic this coming semester – following another two the semester after. It’s odd to think how far we all came, how far I came to reach this point.

Looking back I think in reality my Basic year had to be the most stressful time in my life. This is funny because those who have watched me grow through now may say different. But my basic year, like many others, I had really no idea what I was getting myself into, and with that, I started to fall in love with this career and its aspects for myself that failure was not an option because I didn’t want to lose it. It was test module after test module, chapter quizzes, research papers, extraction day, pass a comprehensive final to move onto clinicals or else retake the entire basic class, and when you thought you have done all you could do – you had to memorize and accomplish prefect performance of over 20 basic skills. I threw up at least three times during that whole semester just due to plain stress and nerves – first time in my life. Overall I’d like to think that maybe our EMT-Basic course was like some weird sick boot camp, because we started with over 20 students and ended with eight moving on to Intermediate.