Military Vet to Nurse

[storxusmc]

Hello All,

I recently decided it was best that i start a change in career as i continue to look for jobs. I was in the US Marine Corps for 10.5 years as basically a code breaker for intelligence and was denied to stay in because of job over strength because of the withdraw from wars we were in and president demanding that military branches reduce numbers by 2013...Good buddy of mine, previously in charge of me was in 18 years and was given paperwork to be released recently also and he was ahead of promotion curve...

Once i was out.. i started to look into jobs (still unemployed) and found that it was incredibly difficult to attain a job in the field i served in unless i wanted to go back to Afghanistan as a contractor for the military.. and chance my life again which i didn't feel to motivated to do again as the smell over there is unbelievable if anyone reading this has experience you would know what i am talking about..

I have always been someone who likes to help people out and spent thousands of hours volunteering and helping out the community from building houses under the habitat for humanity program to spending time with orphans. Recently while stationed in South Korea before getting out i dressed up as Santa and let all the kids tell me what they wanted and gave them small gifts that i could afford...

I am finishing my first semester at Lake Sumter State College and decide i wanted to move to Tampa, FL to be around most of my family and applied to St. Petersburg College for Fall 2013. In my first semester back in college i was asked to say a little about myself and what degree i was chasing and found that in all 3 classes i took over the summer people would smirk and giggle when i stated i wanted to pursue nursing.. is this a common issue in this field? I think its interesting that my class mates joke about it but sometimes i think of how this is thought of by the public.... Most people i have asked what is the first thing that comes to mind when they say male nurse.. with all the people i asked females cause most of the classmates for females this past summer i was told they thought of "Male Nurse Stripper"...

Anyways.. just introducing myself a little and wanted to see how others are treated as a male in the nursing field going through school..

[TexRN, BSN, RN]

There are some excellent male RNs here where I work, love em to bits!

It's nice to see a fellow soldier here. It sounds like we may as well help eachother out if we can. I am active duty army as a lab tech. Stationed at Fort Leavenworth. I will be etsing in 14 months and plan on applying to rn school Fall of 2015.

[CURRYA]

Good to see another Veteran on the site, Navy veteran here! Welcome, and good luck!

[smatrang001]

First off, thank you for your service. And secondly, I think it's great. My husband is currently active duty army. Well he got terribly injured in 2010. I noticed that he was way more comfortable with male docs and nurses than he was with female ones. Sitting around one day with him and some of his injured buddies, I found out they much rather prefer men to women, mainly because they're much more comfortable, hence, working with nothing but other men (no censoring needed when working with other grunts). They felt super uncomfortable getting examined and cared for, much less express their problems, to a female other than their wife. So I'd say you would be doing a great service for many men.