Kim at Emergiblog has put out a request for our very first blog post for Change of Shift. I have been blogging since Feb. 2005 (has it been that long?) I started blogging after I was googling some nurse practitioner information and stumbled upon a few NP blogs and noticed that there weren't very many of them out there on the net.

My first posts consisted of answering questions like "What is a Nurse Practitioner?" etc. but further posting also included my aggravations of schooling and pictures of family life. I also tried to include some funnies on occasion. Imagine my surprise when I started to have regular readers (Lisa,Teresa, Azygous, Kim,Geena just to name a few. I felt so honored that some of my fellow nurses in the blogosphere would take the time to leave a comment and encourage me through the harrowing experiences of the times. Some of my readers have come and gone. Some don't blog anymore. I miss popping in and seeing what they've been up to.

Soon, I started to pick up traffic and decided to add yet another reason to blog.
Cold hard cash. Sounds rather materialistic, but when your student loans start stacking up (83,000), you start to look for ways to offset them. I added Adsense (which has been very good to me so far!) Then I got my very first paid advertiser Scrubs Gallery and now I am proud to be an affiliate of NP Business Owner.

School finished and it's been over a year now since I graduated as a FNP and am loving every minute of it. I really encourage anyone who is thinking of becoming a nurse or already is and is thinking of continuing your education, do it!

And don't forget to blog about your experiences so we can all enjoy and learn from them!