A feature on my friend Madysen Mason, a dedicated nurse, who opens up about the challenges and rewards of her profession.
"“There is a very special bond of trust that forms when you really get to know a patient.” Madysen Mason told me when I sat down with her to talk about her experiences as a registered nurse at Southern New Hampshire Health. She kindly let me know what she does on a typical day, and the positives and negatives, but overall how rewarding it can be. She loves what she does, but is always facing many challenges on her day-to-day work basis. “It’s not easy emotionally or mentally,” she said. “A lot of the time it’s a very tiring and demanding job, and you have long shifts.”"
"Madysen knew she wanted to pursue nursing since high school. She did a health occupation study for two years where she studied anatomy and nursing. She was ecstatic about it, and really wanted to see what the clinic setting was like. For her it was very challenging, and she had to put in a lot of study time. There was a lot of testing and memorization. She spent a lot of time in the study going to private rooms and gaining the trust of people and opening up to them, to ready herself for when it came time to enter the profession.
Another time she worked in the mental health unit for emotional support with kids. There was a boy who hadn't smiled since the day he got there. Madysen took some paint on her fingers and splattered it on a canvas, and his face lit up. She was able to make a lot of the kids smile and have a fun time, and to her that was extremely rewarding.
Despite nursing being a really demanding job emotionally and mentally, Madysen loves helping people most of all, and being able to support her patients. It was her motivation that pushed her through the challenges, and the preparation to become a nurse."
Final Project at Bridgewater State University
During my time at Bridgewater State University, I completed a course called, Games of Play and Game Theory. The final project of this class was to create a strategy game. Space Civilization is a strategy based card game where four players compete to be the first to colonize a planet due to Earth no longer being sustainable to live on. Four players compete using astronaut player cards, while collecting resource cards in order to build a civilization. Because it is a strategy based card game, it requires strategy based skills in order to win.
Rulebook
Welcome to Space Civilization! During this game you will be competing as astronauts and galactic explorers to be the first to build your very own civilization on a new planet. Earth is no longer sustainable, and with the growing population, you’ve run out of resources. You need to find a new home on one of the three closest planets in your solar system. You can call home to any of the three planets: Solaris, Regiria, and Aquaron. In this crazy race to space, you will be sucked through wormholes, stealing fellow astronauts food, crew members, and necessities to survive in space. You will face many dangers on your space voyage, including dealing with maintenance fires on your spaceships, and avoiding asteroid belts.