By Rebekah J. Stein

There is a whole other world outside of Tempe Prep and our alumni are out there using the tools they learned at Tempe Prep to do exciting things, and have once in a lifetime experiences outside of high school and college and beyond.

This is the case with Emily Hedberg, Class of 2012.  After graduating from Tempe Prep, she went on to Seattle University to study nursing.  She also competed for four years in cross country and track.  Although Seattle University is a small school it is also a Division 1 school, which meant that Emily could compete with some big schools.

In keeping with her TPA newspaper roots, she was the Sports and Opinion Editor of the university paper and liked it so much that she considered switching to journalism for a bit.

While in college she spent time in Kenya working in a clinic and a mortuary.  After college she went to Nepal for a while to get labor and delivery experience.

When Emily graduated college, she was offered a job as a labor and delivery nurse at Evergreen Hospital in Washington.  This was an intense 12-week training to be a postpartum nurse and then a year on her own as a postpartum nurse before switching to labor and delivery.  This enabled her to care for 3 to 4 mothers and their babies from the time they were born until they went home.

Emily is now a labor and delivery nurse and says she loves every second of her job, and can’t believe she gets paid to do it.  There are other perks to Emily’s job which include 3 days of 12-hour work shifts with four days off which she uses to explore the Northwest, Portland and Canada.  Emily likes to ski, climb, and backpack.

Not bad for a former Tempe Prep Knight!