Last Night of Class

Today was our last day of class. I passed all of my practical exams without any problems. We had our last get together as a class tonight which was sort of a bummer. Even though it has only been a month, I've grown pretty close to my classmates as well as our instructors. This class has made me think about a lot with my past, current, and future life. It's made me look at myself as a firefighter and EMT with a keener eye. It's made me questions some of the things I've seen and done as an EMS provider and it has allowed me to open my eyes at what a better EMS provider I can be and what the future holds for my career. I'm looking to get my Paramedic and I'm looking to work on an ambulance in Mexico for a few winters. One of our instructors has worked in Ecuador and another instructor owns a house in Mexico so I at least have two sources of information to help with my dreams.

I've made some good friends in this class. I have new climbing partners, ski touring partners, canyoneering partners, and new friends in general. I have new personal and professional references. I have places to stay across the western US as well as the intention to provide a couch or whatever I can where ever I am to these people I've spent the past 4 weeks with.

Tomorrow, I take the National Registry written exam for EMT-Basic. After I leave the testing sight in Oakhurst, CA, I'm heading into Yosemite NP to climb and camp for the night and on Saturday morning, I start my drive to Cedar City. I've found a place to live...sorta...that's going to run me about $175 a month. The only thing holding me up is getting a hold of the Realtor to finalize my lease and tell me where I'll be moving in to.

On a final note, one thing I really enjoyed about the class was when former students or friends and colleagues of the instructors sent them letters or emails about calls they ran or emergencies they dealt with. Asides from just being interesting stories, they proved really educational given at the opportune times. I think I'm going to start posting summaries of incidents, calls, and emergencies I deal with in this journal....minding HIPAA laws of course. Another thing I'm going to start doing is anytime I list the name of a city in an entry, I'm going to embed a link to google maps to give you all an idea of where I'm talking about. Haha, apparently more people read this journal than I think.