I am very happy to be here as my passion is teaching and coaching. I found my passion after building a free-standing women's hospital. After 4.5 years of hearing, " It will get better (the capital [$$$] line)", an opportunity arrived in teaching in an Associate Degree RN program. I knew from the interview that I had found my home. Any faculty office with its door open showed my filing system. Vertical and plentiful! I retired after 17 years. My husband and I had plans for retirement. Picture this, as I often do. Driving around this beautiful country of ours in an RV. He explores while I sit on my lounger with my laptop, teaching. This is how much I love teaching. And the "high" I get is not so much from teaching, but helping students succeed in their quests. The RN program was missing a champion for this outcome. My office door was closed for two reasons, student coaching and I was not inside. Peers urged me to at least bring my door to a crack. They admitted that I was embarrassing them with my access and still returning student work quickly. But that is who I am. If something is important to my students, it is a priority for me as well. Weird, I know, but it is not the first time anyone has found me to be beyond the realm of normal. I can find humor in most situations. I would urge the serious faces from my fundamental student nurses as soon as I could. Humor is the best medicine. All the TV programming involving health care had them convinced they had to show dead seriousness on their faces and approaches. Scary.

我的教练在考试焦虑,并带来了草地des up 5 to 10 percent points. That may not seem much, but for struggling students, it allowed them to progress to the next level. Fantabulous! My school was noted for first pass rates in the licensure exam (NCLEX-RN) of 95% and higher, never in the history of the school had we achieved 100%! My retiring class of 127 student nurses did it! (BTW Eventually EVERY RN school or program attains a 100% pass rate as unsuccessful students retake the exam and pass, BUT that is not THE 1st pass rate. Plus, because we used a team teaching model, I cannot take all the credit, but those alumni I run into during my volunteer gigs say otherwise. Students and success in achieving their goals fill my heart. Alumni have become RN practitioners, high-ranking hospital administrators, and physicians.

You may be thinking, "But I'm not headed for nursing." Do you suffer test anxiety? Have you had people in your life tell you you couldn't do something, bringing self-doubt and lowering you self-esteem? Join the club. There are many other students, including myself, with those same dilemmas! Please let me work with you to open your truly remarkable gifts, because you do have them! ALSO, I have high level APA skills (6th ed) provided by my two Masters' degrees and five doctoral-level writings (I figured out that a Doctorate was not what I wanted or needed for my future service to students and persons with the gift of ADHD.)

Now here is bit about me. I graduated from Vanderbilt University after receiving a U. S. Navy Nurse Corps Candidate Scholarship for the final two years. Talk about the impossible blended with low self-esteem. They began accepting 250 recipients. The Vietnam Conflict was winding down, so the government dropped that number to 120. In the summer before my junior year, only 80 student nurses from around the country would receive this honor. Sure, I was out. But no. I won (I saw it as a game show after awhile)! This was my first insight that I may have more within me than I was led to believe. Here is a thought to take on that came from my first-generation Welsh immigrant grandfather with no formal education. You are better than everyone else, but no one is better than you. Love it.

This Rhode Island native went to school in Tennessee and then was sent to California for active duty. My final assignment was the neurosurgery wing. Being a social animal, I applied and gained entry into the Navy's Operating School in Four Palms, CA with a return to my original base as an OR RN. I married the man I met at Vandy three years after meeting. He was an aviator stationed in Maine. When transfer time arrived, I tried to relocate to the East coast. The current Nurse Corps Admiral said no. So, I released from activity duty and began living with my husband a year after we were married. We have now marked 44 years of wedded "bliss" (ok, any married folks reading this know that isn't always true). We served in Newport, RI, Pensacola, FL (daughter #1), Rota, Spain (daughter #2), and then back to Pensacola, FL. From there I was recruited to build that hospital in Chattanooga, TN. I made a full circle, almost.

We love animals, especially rescues. Our GrandKitty, Oatmeal, is about 10-years-old while rascally Cooper (our 16 lb. dog) is 5. What do I do in my spare time? My daughters will attest to the fact that to see me without a crochet hook or knitting needle is seeing me in overwhelm. I love any hobby that is hands-on. Recently, I have started learning how to quill and emboss. For my internal self as well as to help others, I am a Reiki Therapist learning to become a Reiki Master. The other alternative health skill I possess is Tapping, or EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique). Although trained in the allopathic approach to health care at Vanderbilt, my father's death from melanoma and the associated pain from "treatments" made me question what I could do with my hands besides give medications. These two paths, along with others, I have found to be most helpful in my ministrations to my patients.

Finally, I have a huge investment in coaching people, especially those with ADHD, to bring them to their desired success. Between a test-taking strategy I developed called, "Playing the Game", and the above mentioned meetings with students, mostly non-traditional adult students who had families with complex issues, I have much success in guiding them to their desires. Or more specifically, my students have the success. Not much more in this stage of my life could make me prouder.