Fall 2007
Vol. 14/ No. 2

Nicola Davies (goes by Nicky)

Home: Manchester, England

Accelerated nursing student S07

Previous degrees: BS in mental-health nursing, England

Thoughts about the MU nursing program: The clinicals are much more in-depth than they are in England . It's great. There are more exams here though and that's been hard for me. I had to adjust because I'm not much of a test taker. This is a fantastic program and I couldn't have chosen a better one anywhere.

Work: I work 10 hours a week at the University Bookstore and I think it's great to do something other than nursing right now. It also helps me balance my time and time balance is essential.

Hobbies: I love to travel and since being in the United States I've traveled to Portland , Washington and several towns and cities throughout Connecticut with my boyfriend Trevor. After graduation, we plan on traveling more places.

I have become a movie buff since meeting Trevor. He has a degree in theatre and movie production and I have to admit that I've become a bit of a film snob over the years. We go to movies and then talk about all aspects of the film afterwards. We just saw Transformers and I loved it – it was very well made.

We also love wine tasting as well as seeing how it's made. We developed a taste for this while living in Australia and needless to say I love visiting Hermann.

I also love cooking and entertaining. If I hadn't chosen to go into nursing, I would become a chef. I love trying new foods although it can be challenging because I'm a vegetarian. I cook a lot of Indian dishes as well as Greek and Thai, but Indian is my favorite. The US doesn't have good Indian restaurants like we have in England . Cooking is a way for me to express my creative side. I love mixing flavors and impressing my friends with my dishes.

Other information: I'm the only girl out of four children; my dad is a mechanic and my mother works at Morison's, a store in the UK. I am an extrovert and love anything that brings me in contact with people, but I'm not a sports person at all. The attitude toward life is different between the UK and the US is vastly different. Americans are more driven or focused on goals and success than we are. So coming here was quite a cultural change however my accent is a good ice breaker as far as getting conversations started.

Pets: Trevor and I adopted two cats since moving to Columbia in 2006 – Sydney and Charlie. Sydney is named after our favorite city in the world and we found him in the middle of Broadway and Charlie was a stray cat we adopted in the nieghbourhood.