Duncan

Ashley is a social butterfly. I know that a big part of why it was so easy for me to uproot and move to the opposite side of the country is because she was already out here... not only living less than a mile away but working in the same hospital on the same unit! Ashley and I went to nursing school together at UF, we were in the same sorority, and we are both planning on going back to school to become nurse anesthetists. Weird huh? Our life-plans finally diverged once we graduated, I decided to go play in a cabin in the woods for a couple months and Ashley started working. One of the pre-requisites for admission to a nursing anesthesia masters program is two years of work experience in an adult ICU. Since Ashley knew she wanted to start working as soon as she graduated she was far more on top of her job search than I was, as a result of this she really did all the legwork when it came to researching good hospitals with good cardiac ICUs that take new-grad nurses. When it finally came time for me to start looking for places to interview, the path of least resistance seemed to be to check out Ashley's unit... and the next thing I knew I was staying at her apartment while I waited for my car and my belongings to get shipped to LA! She and her roommates whisked me off to a Hollywood club my first official night as a California resident and the social invites haven't stopped since. One of the best parts of meeting Ashley's friends is that the majority of them are nurses on our unit (that started when she started - the new grad class before mine). It is like I got to skip the entire awkward "getting to know you" stage with my coworkers because I have already met most of them at a bar or party with Ashley! Ashley has another friend, Duncan who just graduated from architecture school at UF and moved out to LA about a month after I did. This past Saturday Duncan invited a bunch of us out to his aunt and uncle's house for a day by the pool watching the Kentucky Derby and eating fresh crawfish (shipped out to us live by his dad). It turned out that Ashley had to work Saturday :( so we enjoyed a mint julep toast in her honor as a thanks for bringing us all together.
L to R: Paige, Jeff, AK (impersonating a crawfish), Duncan, AP