for experienced nurses. Would you go into nursing today knowing what you know now?

Yes I would. I can't sing that well to make a living. I walk like a constipated chicken, when I wear high heels, and feathers from my boa kept flying up my nose. I'm short for my height, so no athlete, not everyone appreciates my sense of humor, so no talk show, and I like to wear blue and green together, so no fashion career. Nursing, well, I sing international christmas songs to my patients, - I know O tannembaum for the germans, I know a ukrainian christmas carol, I know a couple of french xmas carols ( I don't just save them for the christmas season). I get to dress up in my lady from glad whites, and cap. I have fun at work with my patients and staff. I've done a triathalon by the end of every shift. So everything has worked out for the best.

I wouldn't choose the path of nursing again, but NOT because I do not love nursing because I do. I grew up saying I was going to be a doctor someday, but that day never came. I started college in my late twenties with no idea of what career field I would choose. Then after taking a lot of psychology courses, I decided I would become a counselor instead. Not long into my first college year, I met a lady who was in one of my psyche classes who told me she was going into nursing. She encouraged me to check into it since I wanted to be a part of the health profession in some way, so I checked into it.

I took one of those career-interest test, and the test showed that nursing should have been the last thing for me to choose. According to that test, the top three careers that it felt I would be best suited at were math, politics, and religion. Now, as passionate as I am about all three of those, I couldn't see myself spending my life doing any of them. Today, I can honestly look back and say how right the test was. LOL!

I chose nursing because I thought it was as close to being a doctor as I would ever get. I did very well academically, in skills lab and in the clinical area with patients. My psyche rotation professor told me that she thought I would be an excellent psyche nurse. I told her "No way!" Well, I feel as if most of what I accomplished in nursing after graduation was psyche-related anyway (dealing with patients, family members, staff, etc. in ways that called on me to often use "therapeutic communication").

I must've allowed my love for nursing to shine through somehow because one of my kids is a nurse today, another works as a medical receptionist after spending eight years in the Army as a medic, and the third one is in college to become that doctor I always wanted to be.

If you really love something, what you love will radiate all around you and spill over onto others who observe you in action. If you don't have a love for something, that too will show.

I love being a nurse, have always wanted to be a nurse and would not give it up for almost anything!! Vicki RN