Hi, my name is Kristen Kartes, and I'm a pre-nursing major in the College of Health and Human Services and I'm from Elkin, North Carolina. I chose nursing as my major because ever since I was young, I've always enjoyed helping people. And I've always wanted to make sure I had a good stable job. My anatomy teacher should actually get us up and get us involved. We got to learn about the different kinds of tissues, epithelial tissues, connective tissues, all kinds of different tissues, it's easier to remember because you're actually doing it.

I'm in the exercise science program and everything I do is driven by movement. And if I can do an in class demonstration, if I can get the students to go into a local elementary school and teach lessons to the children, they're going to get hands on experience. That's procedural learning, regardless of how I present something in the classroom, it's only a starters kit. They have to think out of the box, take the basic tools that I gave them, rework them to fit that context.

UNC Charlotte School of Nursing actually requires that you have 50 hours of hands-on experience. I actually had an internship at the hospice home in my hometown. I think internships are a great thing to do, especially over the summer, because whenever you're done with it, you're pretty much guaranteed a job. The last day I was there, I was offered a job on the spot.

Even with 200 students in the classroom, I'll have volunteers come up and we will demonstrate something in physics. I give them ways of applying it in a real situation. We're like one big family and the students recognize that, so if you join us, you're going to join a bigger family and we're going to embrace you.