As president of my school's nursing club, I get to help organize the pinning ceremony. I will go to this year's ceremony next month to see what it's all about, but I'm wondering if any of you have some ideas for me to talk about our next meeting. How was your ceremony? Anything you loved? Anything you hated? I gather that pretty much everyone has a photo slide show playing in the beginning, accompanied by music that has to be meaningful in some way, but what else?
Specializes in Med/Surge, Psych, LTC, Home Health.
We didn't have a photo slide show, but that would have been neat! =) Ummm, we did have a former student come and sing a couple of "inspirational songs" ("I Hope You Dance" and "One Moment In Time"), one of the senior professors gave a speech, and then we had our pinning... we each walked across the stage and were met in the middle of the stage by one or two (or in some cases 3-4!) people in our lives who were very meaningful to us, who pinned us.
Plus, when we walked into the auditorium, we all carried candles. And of course, we had to recite the Nightingale Pledge.
It was an absolutely beautiful ceremony and I cried throughout the whole thing. But I really loved nursing school and had become close with most of my classmates!
Oh, I know I am going to bawl! Not a worry. I expect streams of mascara down my white uniform. I teared up just when this year's grads were explaining to us what would happen!
So actually, I'm not really looking for more sentimental ideas - I am sappy enough. I need ideas on other stuff - what did you all do after? Our pinning is in our college's gym so there's tons of room and hundreds of friends and family members come. And I'm thinking we could have punch and cookies out or something. Did anyone have a dinner? We will have about 100 grads so I don't know how that would work. Who gave a speech? Was it good?
Specializes in Cardiothoracic Transplant Telemetry.
At my school it had always been tradition to give flowers to the faculty members as a thank you. I thought that it was a wonderful way to point out the faculty to family members. The problem that I saw when I attended previous pinnings was that because our school didn't do pinnings in uniform that there was no way to determine a graduate from a guest during the before and after reception. The way that we rectified this situation was by getting corsages for the faculty, and a pure white lei for each of the graduates. They were gorgeous, worked with whatever color the graduate was wearing, and are appropriate to wear by both the men and women graduates. It was beautiful.
We also were able to choose who did our actual pinning. Most in my class chose parents or spouses. This does cause a bit of a traffic jam if everything isn't planned well enough, but just needs a little extra planning.
So for my pinning, we all wore "dressy" attire, meaning no jeans or sneakers obviously..and no cleavage! We did NOT want to wear our ugly white uniforms on our day to shine! We as a class chose a professor to speak and also nominated a classmate to speak as well, both were awesome! We had a loved one pin us which I think is SO important, I had my parent's..they saw me through frustration, tears, and joy! This does take a little while for obvious reasons and we limited the number of people who could be on the stage to 3. Then we had a slide show which people could put pictures of nursing school in, clinical rotations, family photos, after school activites (no drinking or partying pictures though!) which was really nice, such a personal touch. We gave each of the professors flowers and a group photo of my class, framed, with a little blurb of words underneath to sort of start a new tradition.
Afterwards we had a little reception, sort of a meet and greet with each other families and professors. All in all it was really nice ceremony and then graduation was later on that day.
We had to wear a white uniform that we had to purchase(our clinical uniforms were different) and we were pinned by various instructors instead of family members. When we came in, we each had the lamp with a candle(battery operated though). Sounds cheesy, but it actually looked pretty cool.
They read a blurb about each of us that had who we wanted to thank, what hospital we'd be working at and what specialty. As we got pinned, they took a picture.
I enjoyed my pinning ceremony and didn't attend my graduation, because the pinning ceremony was something that was just for the nursing students. The graduation was hours long and while I enjoyed my nursing school experience for the most part, I pretty much despised the school as a whole.
The part where we were reciting the Nightingale Pledge....when I said the word "pure" my candle went out! :uhoh21: If I weren't so afraid of being struck by lightning....I would have burst out laughing...
Tres
seriously when one of our instructors pinned me and whispered "Never forget the old lady who gave you this..." Hell how could I? She did two tours of duty in country in Vietnam....breast cancer survivor, intelligent
passionate and wickedly funny. I wanna be her when I grow up...
Our Pininng ceremony was 2 or 3 hours before graduation (private school with less than 30 graduates). We wore white from head to toe. Two graduates were honored for excelling in maternal-child and adult nursing (there may have been 1 more but I can't recall). The best part for me was being pinned by husband. After intorducing the student the instructor read a litte about why we chose who we chose to pin us. That was great. Then we changed for graduation which was "dressy" and went to the chapel for graduation ceremony. Of course we did the pledge, the prayer, and the school song. A couple of speeches by the instructors about memorable events during the course of our program. Took about an hour and a half. I loved that we were allowed to add a personal touch to our ceremony. I don't know how that would work with a large class.
I went to a very small school for my LPN, we only had 18 graduates. I was Secretary so I had to plan the event.
We had it at a small local church. We all walked in carrying a single red rose. Officers sat on the stage.
After all the speeches by the school owner, the clinical instructor, class pres and vice pres it was finally time for the pins. On the stage was the instructor, medical director (female MD). We entered the stage to AAron Neville's Ave Maria. The instructor pinned us.
We then had the instructor and MD stand and we again entered the stage one by one and gave them the roses to the tune of Wind Beneath My Wings. It was very emotional.
. one my fellow graduates was a pediatric leukemia survivor. she'd been treated in a military hospital, and grew up wanting to be a pediatric oncology nurse just like her favorite nurse who took care of her, although she hadn't seen the woman since she left the hospital nearly twenty years before. well, someone at my school, working with her parents, found said nurse, and that nurse pinned my classmate instead of the professor who pinned everyone else. she even wore her old nursing school cap! this was a complete surprise to the graduate, and all of us. there was not a dry eye in the house and whenever i think of it, i have goosebumps!
jess
this is one of the coolest things i have ever seen in my life. thank you so much for posting it!!!!!
Oh, I know I am going to bawl! Not a worry. I expect streams of mascara down my white uniform. I teared up just when this year's grads were explaining to us what would happen!
So actually, I'm not really looking for more sentimental ideas - I am sappy enough. I need ideas on other stuff - what did you all do after? Our pinning is in our college's gym so there's tons of room and hundreds of friends and family members come. And I'm thinking we could have punch and cookies out or something. Did anyone have a dinner? We will have about 100 grads so I don't know how that would work. Who gave a speech? Was it good?
Thanks again for the help -
L.
Oh! Afterwards? We split and had a big party at a local restraunt. The school had a little gathering with punch and cookies...but since the ceremony was pretty much right at dinner time, most groups opted to go get food (and beverages! ). If you want to do something more than cookies, call some places about catering and get costs. Maybe the students would want to chip in on it if it's not in the budget.
Specializes in Cardiothoracic Transplant Telemetry.
Oh, I know I am going to bawl! Not a worry. I expect streams of mascara down my white uniform. I teared up just when this year's grads were explaining to us what would happen!
So actually, I'm not really looking for more sentimental ideas - I am sappy enough. I need ideas on other stuff - what did you all do after? Our pinning is in our college's gym so there's tons of room and hundreds of friends and family members come. And I'm thinking we could have punch and cookies out or something. Did anyone have a dinner? We will have about 100 grads so I don't know how that would work. Who gave a speech? Was it good?
Thanks again for the help -
L.
We had the advantage of being able to help with the actual ceremonies for the classes before us, so we had a really good idea of what we liked and what we didn't. It seemed that every class did things differently. Some classes did a lot of fundraising and did a formal dinner at a nice restaurant, but then there was a limit to the amount of guests that they could have. Other classes had punch and cake and that was it, and other classes did limited catering for everyone.
We had a couple of limitations. First, our pinning was late in the afternoon and many people wanted to do family celebration dinners afterwards and did not really want to hang around. Second, there was always a problem with seating and how to feed all of the graduates and all of their loved ones on a limited budget. (my class never really got into the whole fundraising thing).
We ended up with a compromise lunch the day before. Were able to do limited catering with sandwiches and coffee, soda, pastries, desserts and salads- was actually a very nice lunch fare. This was a sit down event with the faculty, graduates and one or two close relatives.
There were several advantages to this. First we were able to do the intimate sit down meal that we all wanted- and we controlled costs. Second we were able to use many of the decorations for the meal the next day for the pinning- we were a december graduating class so we had two dozen pointsettas that were on all of the tables, and later lined the stage giving a great deal of color. Third we were able to take everyone down to the auditorium at the end of the lunch for a quick rehersal and walk through of the traffic control for pinning- we were all on the stage during the speeches and award presentations, then left the stage and lined up for the individual pinning. The final advantage was that we were then able to provide punch and cake on the day of the pinning and everyone could invite as many people as they wanted to the actual ceremony. No one wanted to tell anyone that they couldn't invite their minister, great-grandmother or second cousin because we didn't have the money to feed them.
feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
My pinning was the 'standard' slide show, academic awards, and pinned by an instructor (not of our choice).
What I would have liked would have been a reception afterwards...it felt like we were all there together and then....not there. Would have liked some closure.
And the idea of being pinned by an instructor who really meant something to me would have been great. I was pinned instead by an instructor that I'd never had during the course of my schooling.
Good for you to think and plan ahead! I am sure you will come up with a lovely ceremony!
The school had a little gathering with punch and cookies...but since the ceremony was pretty much right at dinner time, most groups opted to go get food (and beverages!
NurseCard, ADN
2,850 Posts
We didn't have a photo slide show, but that would have been neat! =) Ummm, we did have a former student come and sing a couple of "inspirational songs" ("I Hope You Dance" and "One Moment In Time"), one of the senior professors gave a speech, and then we had our pinning... we each walked across the stage and were met in the middle of the stage by one or two (or in some cases 3-4!) people in our lives who were very meaningful to us, who pinned us.
Plus, when we walked into the auditorium, we all carried candles. And of course, we had to recite the Nightingale Pledge.
It was an absolutely beautiful ceremony and I cried throughout the whole thing. But I really loved nursing school and had become close with most of my classmates!