My Personal Experiences Prior To Attending The LVN Program
This article is filled with memories, reflections, and ramblings regarding the events that prompted me to attend a school of vocational nursing (a.k.a. LVN program).
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First of all, I will provide a little background information to enable readers to paint a mental picture. I had been accepted to three regional state universities during my senior year of high school, but was unable to attend due to a lack of finances combined with my parents' refusal to cosign for any student loans. Therefore, I basically worked a string of dead-end jobs during the five years that elapsed after my high school graduation. My resume included workplaces places such as McDonald's, the 99 Cent Store, Target, two grocery stores, and a group home that housed six developmentally disabled adults.
I completed a medical assistant program when I was 19 years old, but my training never resulted in a job in the medical field. I also attended community college for one year, but found the environment to be childish and alienating. In addition, I was struggling to pay for classes, books, and transportation with the low-wage jobs that I had been working at the time.
At the age of 20, I landed a job that seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime. A factory that had been owned by a Fortune 500 corporation offered me a position as an entry level technician. The starting pay rate was $12.95 hourly, which seemed like a great deal of money to me. After all, I had never earned more than $8 per hour during my entire life. Although the work was dirty, backbreaking, and very physical, I remained at this workplace for more than three years. After all, my pay gradually climbed to $15.21 hourly, and my employment options were severely limited without any education beyond high school.
Three years into my stint at the factory, something happened that caused me to make a snap decision about where my future would be headed. My supervisor was really giving me problems on that day, and my manager was threatening to write me up. I felt somewhat mortified because, instead of discussing matters with me behind closed doors, they were broadcasting this information out in the open for others to hear.
Suddenly, I decided that I would never return to this factory again. I was 23 years old, living on my own, and had enough money saved to survive for approximately one year. After consulting with a psychiatrist the next day, I went out on stress leave. During my time away from work, I applied for and was accepted into a 12-month LVN program at a private nonprofit school. Furthermore, I was pleased to discover that I had been approved for a career training loan through Sallie Mae to finance the tuition.
Those 12 months of training were not easy. Since I was now unemployed, I lost my health insurance, so I had to attend school while contending with uncontrolled hyperthyroidism and other health problems. The school had a full-time schedule of five days per week. Three of those days were clinical shifts, and the other two days were spent in the classroom. In addition, I lived 95 miles away from the campus, so I was putting approximately 1,000 miles onto my little black Hyundai per week.
However, the struggle was worth it in the end because I graduated from the LVN program in October 2005 and found a job within one week of receiving my temporary license. My worries about being limited in the employment market due to a lack of education beyond high school were over. Moreover, the LVN license enabled me some room for career mobility and the chance to further my education, because I ended up earning my RN license a few years later.
I am now 31 years old, and although my educational path is filled with delays and detours, I still have no regrets. After all, I had to fight more than one uphill battle to get to where I am today.
