CBNU’s Department of Nursing had permission of establishment in 2011 when the first freshmen entered the Department of Nursing. The students had difficulties such as a lack of classrooms, absence of seniors and no information about the major. In spite of these difficulties, the students ended up graduating from CBNU. The students have done a lot of volunteering that include promoting blood donation and a prevention campaign of MERS through their campus life. In addition to that, they donated one million won to their department. Let’s hear about the story from the first graduate, named Gwon So-yoon, who is a representative of the department.

■ Campus life as the first freshman

  At first, when I entered CBNU, there wasn’t a nursing building, so we couldn’t help sharing some classrooms, including professors’ offices, with other majors’ students. However, as years passed by, we could get more classrooms and offices. Some people said that considering that there were no seniors, they would have had a hard time living on campus, but I thought differently from them. I thought there must be some advantages about it. As a matter of fact, our professors helped us with good advice and treated us nicely.

■ How to volunteer

  We could easily participate in many volunteer activities through our major. First, we were informed of the volunteering opportunities from our major office on a regular basis, so all we had to do was to decide whether to attend or not. For example, the other day, freshmen, sophomores and juniors volunteered for a prevention campaign of MERS at Chungbuk National University Hospital. At that time, the students were checking people’s body heat and conducting a survey regarding MERS with the hopes that MERS was no longer spreading over Korea. Although the service was not mandatory, many students took part in the service. We also promoted blood donation on the street when CBNU’s festival was held.

■ What made graduates donate one million won to the major?

  We were looking to do something helpful for our major before graduation because we thought that the nursing facilities were inadequate to meet students’ needs. Therefore, we decided to donate our own money. There were some other ideas, but we thought that it is much more meaningful to donate money than to just give presents. Since the graduates consist of 45 students, donating that much money didn’t place a burden on each student. Technically, it hasn’t taken effect yet. We have to take some steps to make the donations come true. We are hoping that the next graduates also will do something helpful for our major and that this kind of tradition will continue.

■ To students thinking of entering the Department of Nursing

  These days, compared to the past, many male students tend to enter our major. Even though there are no rules that male students have to do certain things and vice versa, there are things that are much easier for male students to do than for female students, so I hope that many male students will consider being nurses and won’t hesitate to apply for a nursing major. I’ve seen some students who applied for our major only because it can help them to get a job easily in the future or their parents want them to be a nurse. This is not a good choice because they will end up being sick of taking classes and falling behind the other students. I want students who really want to be a nurse or are really interested in helping others to come to our major.

By Lee Seong-ho
shl36@cbnu.ac.kr