Today, our group was up early to catch the double-decker bus! I was so excited to finally experience riding on one of these buses and it was so fun sitting at the top.
Next, we headed over to the BCU City Center Campus and met our amazing tour guide/ mentor Chinenye Anetekhai! She is truly just a ball of light. All of us absolutely adore her and her passion for wound care. We first had a brief introduction with her and she took time to get to know each and every one of us which was so important to me because it made me feel like she genuinely was excited to meet us and show us around BCU!
After our introduction, she then took us around the city center campus library and the interior was a lot different than the Pitt-Greensburg campus. There were so many different places to sit and study, but different types of booths, chairs, and tables. I would love to study in a library like this. The vibes of the people around us was so positive and such a diverse population here compared to college campuses in the States. Not just in culture or race, but also in age. It was such a breath of fresh air to see an older population here getting their education! It really shows that there isn’t an age limit on college.
Once we left the library and the city center campus, we walked around the campus and stopped into their art building as well as their engineering building. The art building when we walked in was gorgeous. I gasped at how beautiful the art work was on the walls. I would definitely love to explore that building more. When we walked into the engineering building, I was astonished by how different each building’s architecture inside is. The engineering building looked like our convention center back in Pittsburgh! It was such a cool experience to be able to see some of that building as well.
We then ventured off to find the next double-decker bus to reach the south campus for BCU. Two double-decker buses in one day? No complaints here; I loved every minute of it! Anyways, we then made it to the south campus, and this building was more for the life sciences and nursing students. This building was smaller than the city center campus, but the walls and designs throughout the building didn’t fail to amaze me. We found the classroom that Chinenye Anetekhai was going to lecture us in, and we had a brief discussion on the diversity in this city compared to the States, and we also talked about how teachers are more involved in student’s lives than in America. Chinenye explained to us that any new student that comes into the school system gets a visit at home to make sure their living situation is okay. I could see how this is frowned upon in the US because there have been many cases of teacher predators and creeps, but I honestly think if they would visit little kid’s homes, they could get a better understanding of how the child is not only in the classroom, but how it truly is at home. Kids can only explain so much, but most abused children will lie or not say anything in fear of losing their siblings or guardians, which made me rethink a lot, especially going into healthcare. I will need to pay more attention on how patients come in and notice if there is any bruises on them or if they say anything that would hint at abuse at home. I got a lot out of that brief discussion!
After eating in the south campus’s dining hall, we headed back upstairs to the same classroom, and Chinenye gave us a delightful and engaging lecture on wound and burn care! I learned a lot concerning how to prevent burns from happening in households, specifically with children. Something I learned that I didn’t know was that this is the leading cause of disability in different countries, but it makes complete sense. In her lecture, there was a lot of nursing review from my anatomy class, including layers of the skin, burn levels, and how they calculate the percentage of burns on a patients body (Rule of Nines). I loved the lecture, and she definitely influenced me to possibly look into working in wound and burn care!
I had a blast touring BCU today, and I can’t wait for tomorrow!