Ok, this is pretty personal, but no one here knows who I am so here goes! I need any advice anyone has on juggling a full time family and full time nursing school. I get all A's and B+'s in school, I love clinical, I have made a few great friends in nursing school. Bottom line is that I've found my niche and I am going to be very fulfilled with my career as a nurse. I was a single mom for 8 years, my son's father was very unsupportive and then went to prison when my son was about 3 as well as my mother (long story, no good outcome). I new I always wanted to be a nurse but saw no way to accomplish my goal in any "traditional" way. I also had to find a way to be everything to my son that he needed and not deprive him of ANYTHING because of poor choices I had made or goals I had. I became a topless dancer. I accomplished some of my college prereqs towards my RN and met a wonderful, but difficult man who was tolerant of my independence. Long story short... RN classes are getting very difficult to get into and I am getting older. Gravity is going to take it's toll sooner or later and my wonderful man is growing less tolerant. We moved in together 2 years ago and in August I began a full time LPN program. He has been financially supporting my child and I ever since, but I still dance once or twice a week on the weekends to have money to help do what I need to with school expenses and my son. This is the only alternative I can come up with right now and I've been doing it for 7 years now. I guess it's my safety net. We aren't married, and he has no interest in EVER getting married. I won't push this because finding true love is so rare, why mess it up over technicalities right? Even though he supports me financially he gets so angry that I spend so much time on my school work. I am fascinated with everything I am learning and I know that slacking could be a matter of life and death someday. I've actually had the luxury of witnessing nurses make poor choices in the clinical setting and I often wonder if they were "slackers" in school only scraping by with the bare minimum of 75 to pass! He actually gets angry with me for doing school work and studying until 11pm. Sometimes it's later I'll admit, but I've been cutting back and attempting to make more time for him. He seems to just be jealous all around. He purposely falls asleep early on me and then wakes up after I fall asleep. This is just during the school week. On the weekends he is angry if I go to work. Mind you I work for 3 hours (that's with a 2 hours of total travel time back and forth) and come home with between $300-400. I cook homemade dinners at least once a week if not twice, on weekends I started a garden with his 6 year old to keep her busy. Did I mention that he has 3 kids??? They don't live with us but the 2 girls ages 6 & 11 come on weekends and actually the 17 year old boy lives with us when he comes home from his cousins house next door! Well my 10 year old son does live with us full time but I try to find activities to keep the kids busy on the weekends, feed the kids and all their friends, clean after all the kids, and keep up with the housework as best as I can. No matter what I feel like I can't win. I refuse to quit school, and I've tried to quit my job and work as a waitress, but still they were angry. I was away from home more often, had less money, the housework was never done, and none of us were happy at all. I think if I get my CNA license and do that full time I will be burnt out before I even get my LPN license. God bless all the CNA's out there... with 2 patients at clinical I am beat. I would feel so anxiety ridden if I could only give some care to my patients because I had 10 others to wake up and get to breakfast in an hour. Plus the fact that I wouldn't be making much, and I would have to work 40 hours to make what I can make in 3 putting me away from my family and once again making them mad at me. I've pretty much been a multi-tasker and a quick thinker all my life. I've been on my own since I was 15 and I know how to survive. Survival and happiness don't always go hand in hand however. I just keep telling myself that an end is in sight (January 2010) at least for the LPN program. My prereqs will most likely expire for the RN program if I don't bridge right in but I'm willing to make that sacrifice to keep my family happy. I will hopefully have the opportunity to go back for my RN in the future when my son is a little older and my man is a little less "needy". I think they will all just totally rebel if I continue my nursing education past January right now. I actually thought that I would hate geriatrics. I wanted to ultimately become an OR nurse. After my second week of clinical I found that I fell in love with geriatrics so my OR nurse dream can wait. I can fulfill my need for gore with wound care, plenty of that in most settings as a LPN and as I said, I love those little old people. I just don't know how to hold my family together in the mean time. At the beginning of our LPN program our instructors warned us that this intense 18 month program has been known to destroy marriages, finances, and lives. How eerily true that was. What they failed to mention was if the families ever recovered after the program. When the students graduated did the stress disappear? Were the white flags of peace drawn at home? Do you reach the finish line only to find yourself celebrating alone? How can one person be everything to everyone or just everything they want to be? I guess it's no wonder I'm being treated for chronic headaches and migraines since September! I don't know if anyone has any advice, has been there, done that, lived to tell the story (with a happy ending please!!!). Maybe not, or maybe this horrendously long post will help another mom/student feel not so alone. If you read this far, thanks for the listening eyes! Good luck everyone! :imbar
