Nursing students will be resuscitating themselves this week with free pizza, ice cream and matching T-shirts.
During the third annual Nursing Spirit Week, organized by the group Student Nurses at Penn, members of the school will show their nursing pride through a variety of events.
"It's a time when people can ease up about the stress of all their classes and have some fun together," Nursing junior Juliet Marx said.
This year, SNAP has added some new events to the itinerary and also kept some old favorites.
"It's getting better and better every year because more and more people are getting involved," Nursing junior Miranda Mirabella said.
Monday was Inspiration Day, during which Nursing students wore their scrubs and Nursing T-shirts -- which read "The School of Hearts and Sciences" -- to class.
"We're trying to promote ourselves to the University and let people know what we do," Mirabella said. "A lot of people don't understand ... what nursing really is. ... A lot of people think its just victimology and terminology classes."
SNAP also encouraged professors to share memorable stories about their careers with students. Professors of large lectures spent the first few minutes of class discussing why they feel that nursing is a valuable profession.
On Tuesday's Emergency Student Resuscitation day, SNAP hosted an afternoon of free pizza and reruns of the television show ER in the Nursing Education Building.
Wednesday afternoon featured the "Call for Posters." Nursing students who have recently completed research will create posters from PowerPoint presentations and present their findings to staff and students.
"We're one of the smaller schools here at Penn, and we like to celebrate all the hard work that we do," Marx said.
The afternoon also features a traditional favorite -- the staff and student Ice Cream Social.
On Thursday night, Nursing students will head downtown to a party at Paradigm, located at Third and Chestnut streets.
For the first time, the Nursing School will co-host the party with the Widener University Nursing School, also located in Philadelphia.
Nursing sophomore and SNAP Public Relations Chairwoman Kim Maciorowski said that the party will be a major fundraiser for the organization. She expects that it will fund SNAP's Rehydration Station at Spring Fling, which supplies water for all the flingers.
Friday marks another new addition to Spirit Week -- Communiversity Day, organized by SNAP and Community Relations at Penn. Nursing students will host 15 10th graders from the local Sayre High School to spend a day with Penn Nursing students.
Maciorowski said Communiversity Day will foster higher education pursuit among the high school students.
She added that it will also serve as a public-health education opportunity because the students will learn about about lung and heart health.
"I'm excited to introduce nursing to younger kids who may not know the opportunities available for them," Marx said.
Marx hopes that Spirit Week will help the Nursing School feel less isolated and more integrated with the Penn community.
On a larger scale, she said that the week will "recognize that [nursing] is a challenging profession. But it's rewarding, valued and desperately needed right now," she said.
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