On a 2008 student-athlete questionnaire, Jessica Asplund, \u201909 nursing, said that of any moment in history, she would choose to live in the present.<\/p>\n
As a traveling nurse, the former volleyball player has seen Texas, Tennessee and California. When her contract at the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora expires, she\u2019s not sure where she will go next. Maybe Portland or Seattle. A friend is trying to convince her to try Hawaii.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kind of want to make Denver my hometown, but since college I\u2019ve never spent more than a year and a half any place,\u201d she said. \u201cI might just go someplace I haven\u2019t been.\u201d<\/p>\n
A nurse in the intensive care unit, Asplund has worked in some of the nation\u2019s leading hospitals. In the five years since she graduated, she has cared for patients at Woodland Heights Medical Center in Lufkin, Texas; Stanford University Hospital in Palo Alto, California; Kaiser Permanente Downey Medical Center near Los Angeles, California; Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville and Aurora.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s different every month. We see death. You just can let it affect you all the time; it would be just too hard,\u201d Asplund said. \u201cWe have some patients who are so sick, then they receive a heart transplant or lung, and, oh my gosh, it\u2019s the best thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since she graduated, Asplund has worked in cardiac\/cardiothoracic, medical, surgical, neuro and burn\/trauma intensive care units.<\/p>\n
To deal with the day-to-day pressures of her job, Asplund still plays lots of volleyball. She also hikes, camps and, in the winter, skis.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy job can be so serious at times,\u201d she said. \u201cI need those things away from work.\u201d<\/p>\n
When she played volleyball at Tech, Asplund was part of coach John Blair\u2019s effort to rebuild the team and helped the Golden Eagles go from seven wins in her first season to the 2008 Ohio Valley Conference regular season and tournament championships.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more we were together, the more we worked on it and the better we got through the years,\u201d she said. \u201cWe were a big class when we came in and our leadership helped the new people who came in each of the next couple years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asplund, originally from Illinois, was named OVC defensive player of the week that year and still holds Tech\u2019s records for two of the highest single-season hitting percentages. She was also on the athletic director\u2019s honor roll for four semesters and was on the OVC commissioner\u2019s academic honor roll.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On a 2008 student-athlete questionnaire, Jessica Asplund, \u201909 nursing, said that of any moment in history, she would choose to live in the present. As a traveling nurse, the former volleyball player has seen Texas, Tennessee and California. When her contract at the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora expires, she\u2019s not sure where she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":729,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-688","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spring15"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1174,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688\/revisions\/1174"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.tntech.edu\/visions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}