First Aid Classes

My second job is teaching first aid classes, and when they start to get boring and repetitive, I think about the major impact the courses I took had on my life and it motivates me to put my all into teaching again.

The first course I took was when I was extremely young and naive, 15 years old and very sheltered. It was taught by an older guy in a large basement room, and I was by far the youngest. When it came around to splinting, I ended up in a group with a bunch of 20-something year old guys who were trying to become firemen. They were young, gorgeous and flirtatious, and I was a gawky, shy 15-year old. I spent the entire time bright red, especially when one of them winked at me as I was putting the leg splints into place. It was an exciting, totally foreign weekend for me, and I was hooked.

The next class I took was with my sister, and it was taught by 2 university response team members. They were young and cute (a running theme in all my courses), and as passionate about first aid as I was. I had never met people who loved this stuff as much as I did, I finally felt like I belonged. It was in this course where I realized I really did want to do this for a living, and that I wasn't a freak for being so passionate about emergency medicine.

The first responder course I took a couple years later probably had the biggest impact on me. I spent the entire course flirting with an amazing guy who ended up becoming one of my best friends. We pushed each other, motivated each other and encouraged each other throughout the entire course, and have continued to do so in the years since. It was a great course because I took it with good friends, made an even better friend and of course, did very well.

In all the first aid courses I have taken, I can pinpoint something that changed the course of my life. As cheesy as that may sound, it is very true. Remembering that makes me want to make my courses just as amazing for my students, I never know when somebody is going to impacted by what I teach or how I teach it. It's an honour to be on the other side of things now.