Turning to Volunteer Work

About a week and a half ago now, I applied for another job, working front desk at an assisted living home. One of my walking buddies who works there let me know that the part time position was opening up, and I hoped that having that personal connection would get me an in, but apparently it didn't.

So I'm coming up on the end of March already (gasp! it's already the 23rd). If I want to show that I have some medical experience before the nursing school application process begins I need to get on that now, regardless of having an actual paid job in the field or not. It also is starting to seem like volunteer work may be necessary to get a foot in the door to a paid job. There was another opening at United Blood Services in the last couple of weeks but they specified that you could have no other time commitments (strike 1 against me, I'm a part time student) and that you needed a minimum of 6 months previous medical experience. No luck there for me.

One of the local hospitals has a formal volunteer program set up. I figure if I apply now, and I get lucky in terms of the whole orientation process going through in a timely manner (which it might not), it still will be quite a push to get 200 hours done by July 1st. If they do the scheduling like the humane society I used to volunteer with did it (all online, sign up for whatever shifts you want that are available), I could easily do 40ish hours over spring break, but they might not do it that way at all. We'll see.

I am going to go to the hospital and pick up an application tonight.

The nursing school I am applying to gives more credit in the application process for hours *worked* than for hours *volunteered* but there's not much I can do about that at this point other than keep applying, and in the mean time I should start the volunteer as a backup.