The walls on the first floor of the Academic Complex are covered with pictures of registered nurses who graduated from Western over the years.

The haircuts are enough to make heads turn, but those 60 nursing students admitted into the program are more than eager to sign up to get their nursing composite portrait taken.

It means they’re finished.

College for a nursing major is different than college for most students.

They don’t choose their schedules – their teachers do.

They have to wear uniforms sometimes. They have real-life patients, and they’ve given flu shots after practicing on oranges.

They even know how to insert a catheter and give a proper sponge bath, because they’ve actually had to administer them.

For the past couple of years, department head Donna Blackburn said she’s had to turn away numerous qualified applicants each fall because only 60 seats are available. The university approved new faculty positions, however, and 80 students will be admitted next school year based on their GPA, science class grades and personal drive.

“We want to pick students that really want to be a nurse and who are doing it for the right reason,” Dr. Blackburn said.

Once accepted, the selected individuals are given drug tests and physical immunizations while getting background checks conducted and CPR certified.

“The time commitment is unbelievable,” Blackburn said, noting the seriousness of nursing required in dealing with real people who are sick.

As part of a 16-hour load, students are required to spend 12 hours doing clinical and hands-on work with patients.

Each semester is different, though.

The first semester is more school oriented, as they learn the skills and terms for the practical experiences they’ll get in their later semesters.

And their school day is like high school.

They show up at 8 a.m. and sit in the same classroom in the same building with the same people, with an hour lunch before they disperse from school grounds around 3 to 5 p.m. This schedule changes throughout their semesters.

During the day, they stare at projection screens with medical terms like “bronchopulmonary dysplasia,” a chronic insufficiency in the lungs resulting from long-term artificial pulmonary ventilation, and practice full body assessments on dummies with magnetized eyes like a Cabbage-Patch doll.

The dummies, equipped with patient charts, have names such as “Scott Scalp” and “Mary Sunshine,” and they can burp and throw up with the press of a button.

After school lets out, they go home to read from one of the many expensive books they can’t sell back at the end of the semester, but they’re books they keep in handy.

“You read the entire time you’re here,” Elkton junior Julie Jones said.

She said she reads about 60 pages a night, and then recopies all her notes in an effort to study for the timed tests she and everyone else are given.

She’s already graduated with a degree in advertising, but she came back to school for the job security nursing affords. The reading requirements were a big switch for Jones, who said her other major was a lot more laid back and less intense.

Madisonville junior Adam Thomas said nursing school is like having four advanced anatomy classes at once.

“It’s one of the most rigorous undergraduate degrees you can get,” he said. “For a lot of people it’s hard to relax.”

Thomas, one of nine men in his class of 60, has heard the “Meet the Parents” jokes about being a male nurse in-training. He’s even been called “Focker” before, but he doesn’t care.

He doesn’t think it’s weird to be in a female-dominated field. He has a girlfriend, anyway.

Thomas plans on going to graduate school to become a certified registered nurse anesthetist, which hosts a starting salary of $125,000.

But that’s not why he’s in this field.

“You’re always going to have a job because there’s always going to be sick people,” he said. “I work at the Medical Center and I see what they do for people. Besides the fact that I’ll be making money, I’ll be helping people.”

He’s already helping people, though.

When nursing students aren’t sitting in class, they’re in the hospitals with patients, at nursing homes or teaching about nutrition and bicycle helmet safety to grade schools. ?

On the days she goes to the hospital, Jones said she gets up at 5:30 a.m. to be on time after a night of studying and preplanning, in which she looks up her patients’ prescribed medicines, previous medical records and talks to family members. ?

Their days are packed, and some miss the everyday routine of college they used to know.

“I don’t necessarily miss walking up the hill, but I miss seeing people,” Jones said.

Louisville senior Alicia Russell said a nursing major has no time for a social life, and most of her classmates who have part-time jobs and full-time families agree.

“You live for Saturdays,” Bremen senior Elizabeth Jarvis said. “It’s about the only free time you have.”

Reach Lindsay Sainlar at features@wkuherald.com.