@Emergent recently had a great thread titled "So happy to be out of nursing", gave us a status report and future plans. The discussion, as most do, grew organically and went hither & yond.
@LibraNurse27 made a comment to the effect that if she could go back in time, she would tell her temporal ancestor not to become a nurse.
I mentioned that I had just read and studied both the original & graphic novel of Kurt Vonnegut's classic Slaughter House Five where the main character, Billy Pilgrim is "unstuck in time". I was thinking about going back and deciding, "I'm not going to be a nurse!" and doing some kid of project with that idea. What would my life have been like? What career would I have chosen?
So with some support and encouragement from @Squidpdx, this thread is one of the initial conceptions of that project.
I thought about the manner in which I would make the decision not to become a nurse. Would I do as LibraNurse, go back in time and tell my former self to not become a nurse?
Or how about if I could change the initial event, which caused a progressive series of events, which led me to the decision to pursue nursing as a career?
I needed to review my life in a backwards motion: I became an RN after being an LPN after being an EMT after getting certified in CPR after taking a First Aid course.
Why did I choose to take a First Aid course? Because I had been in an MVA, spent months in the hospital, learned a lot about anatomy, became interested in that area, and wanted to help others. The MVA was the initial event which led me to eventually becoming a nurse, so I had to change an event which led to that MVA.
The MVA occurred at about 11pm on a Tuesday night. I've often thought about how events had to play out so that the motorcycle that I was riding went around a curve precisely at the same time an intoxicated driver in a pickup was rounding that same curve from the opposite way.
"At the same time" rang in my mind. "Same time". Why was I rounding that corner at that time?
Because the cat knocked over the alarm clock.
If, that morning, the cat hadn't knocked over the alarm clock, I wouldn't have overslept and been an hour late for work that day. I wouldn't have had to work over an hour to make up that hour. I wouldn't have been an hour late with my plans for that night, and I would have passed that curve an hour earlier while the driver of the pickup was still in the tavern getting inebriated.
My decision to become a nurse initial event was because the cat knocked over the alarm clock, so we're going to put the cat out the night before, he doesn't knock over the alarm clock, I'm not an hour behind in my plans, I don't get into an MVA, and I'm not going to become a nurse.
What was your initial event which caused the series of events that led you to nursing?
And if you would have not become a nurse, how different would your life be?
Specializes in Psych (25 years), Medical (15 years).
On 10/10/2021 at 1:12 PM, morelostthanfound said:
Nursing was an attractive and relatively cheap way to a decent paying career path.
Nursing was attractive, in that it was a highly respectable profession. And getting into nursing at the age of 26 and never being married, I thought it would be a great way to meet women, which it was. Dates were aplenty, and I met all three of my wives at hospitals where I worked.
If memory serves me right, in 1983 when I got into nursing as an LPN, only 7% were male. By 1990, when I became an RN, the percentage of males in nursing had increased to 12%.
And talk about inexpensive, when I started junior college in 1976, the cost was $10.50/semester hour! The hospital where I worked funded my tuition in the late '80's, paying a whopping $600/semester!
As a final note, MLTF, don't feel as though you need to apologize for any negativity. Had I gotten into the nursing field some years later, and was still practicing, I might feel as you do.
Specializes in Psych (25 years), Medical (15 years).
On 10/11/2021 at 4:11 AM, NightNerd said:
This is weird to think about. It's funny how some of these stories have many layers and definitive deciding moments, where others seem...almost inevitable, I guess?
... I guess everything worked out for the best, all things considered. My work life always feels like a mess now, but everything else is pretty great!
NightNerd, to paraphrase Tom Robbins, "Weird is a state which merely requires a little more understanding", that of which I sense you possess.
As per your second quoted portion: It has been said that sometimes we create difficult arenas in order to work through unresolved life issues.
Specializes in Psych (25 years), Medical (15 years).
On 10/12/2021 at 7:06 AM, EDNURSE20 said:
I have no idea why I wanted to be a nurse... I never had an aha moment...
Still to this day, I don’t know what attracted me to the job, just that I wanted to be a nurse...
... It was inevitable I was going to work in health care.
Reading the portions of your post which I quoted reminded me of two Richard Bach quotes, EDNURSE. The bolding is mine:
"You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful being that is your real self..."
"A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed. It feels an impulsion... this is the place to go now. But the sky knows the reason and patterns behind all clouds, and you will know too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons."
For me, there was no one specific event or "aha" moment led me to becoming a nurse. However, there were a couple of things that contributed to my decision to go to nursing school:
1. I had always debated between teaching and becoming a nurse. For some reason, those were the career paths that interested me the most. I've always loved animals and had also briefly thought about a career in veterinary medicine, but then decided against it because I wasn't interested in performing surgery or exposing myself to bites from other peoples' animals.
2. I was hoping that the frequent interactions with patients and families would change my personality. I've always been an introvert, while the majority of my school colleagues and cousins were quite outgoing. I was tired of hearing people tell me how quiet I was and was hoping that I would somehow become an outgoing extrovert by becoming a nurse. Unfortunately, this hasn't really been successful; I haven't seen the changes in myself that I would have liked to have seen. I speak up a little bit more than used to and am slightly more conversational, especially with people that I see every day, but I am definitely not an extrovert. I will never be considered a loud person, and I find that sometimes nursing only makes me want to seclude myself even more.
Specializes in Psych (25 years), Medical (15 years).
1 hour ago, SilverBells said:
I was hoping that the frequent interactions with patients and families would change my personality. I've always been an introvert ...and was hoping that I would somehow become an outgoing extrovert by becoming a nurse.
A paraphrased quote by Joseph Campbell applies to a personality change, SilverBells:
"The consciousness is changed through trials and tribulations with subsequent illuminating revelations."
In essence, when we deal with problem situations, we struggle and learn solutions which expands our perception of reality. We do not change our personality, per se, we utilize methods that are the most successful within the realms of that personality.
The personality is a genetically predisposed template and we, for example, feel, act, and respond within that template. It is known that we do not make new brain cells, however, we can create different pathways- dendrites- which is how our brain cells communicate with each other.
If we repeatedly channel a stimulus to certain areas of our brains, the result is a stronger dendrite pathway to that that part of the brain and those neurons.
Please allow me to use a simple personal stimulus/reaction:
The fear of falling is innate. While involved in Tae Kwon Do as an adolescent, I learned how to fall in order to avoid injury by relaxing and falling on certain parts of my body. Repeated practice allowed me to decrease my fear of falling and I became really good at it, since I'm about as coordinated as the proverbial bull in a china shop.
To this day, nearly 50 years later, I respond to falling in the way I practiced. Just last Summer, I took a rather nasty spill off of my homemade motorbike and came out relatively unscathed.
There are numerous examples of behavioral responses which I have learned in my many years of psych nursing in dealing with aggressively acting out patients which also entails relaxation. All of my reactions are learned responses which are within my personality template.
Sometimes my reaction is merely an act where I've learned to emulate another who was successful in dealing with other similar situations- a learned response which I institutionalized into my psyche.
Pardon me, NMP, and with all due respect, I sense there is much more to the story.
One usually does not climb a ladder unless one wants to reach a higher position.
Nope. That’s how the story began. He said that’s what he would pay for and if I wanted to do anything afterwards, I’d have to pay for it myself. Well, before I had a chance to change paths, here comes the crumb snatchers (aka kids, bills, bill collectors, etc..). So for the next few decades, up the ladder I go, step by step, in my quest to get ahead, and stay ahead of the game, until it was too late to return to entry-level at anything else. I’m stuck like Chuck!?
Oh yeah, there was also a divorce or two here and there and a dependent parent that has been a motivating force on that shove up the ladder, too. I have yet to decide what it is that I want to do when I grow up. Looks like that’s at the top of the to-do list for the next life.
This is fun, I'll play! I guess I never thought about the path not taken quite like this. Nursing is a second career for me. I started out a cosmetologist. I enjoyed what I was doing and where I was working.
I worked for a lady that owned a few shops and she needed a manager for the shop I was in. I also hadn't worked long enough to accrue the required practice hours for a manager's license quite yet. So she fudged my total hours on the application for the state Manager License. That should have been my first clue.
Fast forward about a couple of years. The shop had a huge rent increase by the Mall we were located in so the owner decided to break the lease and move out in the middle of the night. She told mall security they were removing equipment to do the floors and proceeded to empty the shop. Without telling any of the employees! I was not working that day but the staff that showed up were pretty shocked to find the place empty and locked.
She then decided to accuse the staff of stealing from her, which I found out when the police knocked at my door! Needless to say that eventually came to nothing thank goodness but it was extremely stressful.
She of course also fought our unemployment. I was one that fought back and won the case. I was so mad at that woman I figured I'd make what she paid into unemployment work for me as long as I could and stayed home on her dime for about 6 months, maybe longer.
Eventually the unemployment gravy train stopped and I needed to gasp! actually work! So I took a job working as a CNA and ended up progressing my career in health care from there. 27 years later, here I am still a nurse.
Specializes in Psych (25 years), Medical (15 years).
In response to kbrn's post, there's a fable about an wise old man who had some bad things happen to him. When people would express their sorrow at his dismays, he would answer them with "Perhaps they are bad".
After each bad occurrence, something good resulted from that situation. When people expressed their joy at the wise old man's turn of good luck, he would answer them with, "Perhaps they are good".
And the story goes on like that, with good things happening from bad situations and bad things happening from good situations.
Your post, kbrn, reminded me of that fable. Had you not experienced the owner fudging your number of hours, you may not have been able to obtain managerial hours, which can be interpreted as being good.
Then, had you not experienced the bad situation of being knocked down and then kicked by the owner, you may not have been inspired to pursue a job in the healthcare field. Which, again, can be interpreted as being something good.
"Isn't life strange?
A turn of the page."
-Moody Blues
I can say that I did not want to be a nurse. I was young with children and was going to go to college to give us a better future. Looked up salary of a RN and compared to my minimum wage job and it was a huge difference. I thought being a nurse will make everyone so proud of me and will lead me to a better future so enrolled in the program. Fast forward 6 years, still am a nurse and can’t really see myself being anything else. I wish I would of became a veterinarian though.
As a small child, I was intrigued by the medical reference OK that was part of my grandparent’s encyclopedia (remember them?) set. Every time I went to visit them, I pulled out this book & read about everything in that volume. It was published in the 1940s; maybe even before that, and the pictures were very graphic black & white medical documentation photos. I was bitten by the medical sciences bug at age 5. Being a 1st generation American (my parents were from Europe & neither finished high school) my parents did not put great emphasis on education; your a girl, you will get married & give us grandchildren, so in my earlier school years I was far from an academic. It wasn’t until community junior college that I excelled.
I enrolled without any thoughts on what to study. All I knew was that my father was sick & I had to get an education to get a job to help provide for my family in the fastest way possible! And there were no serious prospects for marriage at that time either. I was with my cousin at that time, same 1st generation American, being raised by her widower father who had cancer. She needed a career option as bad as I did. I said to her, let’s enroll into the RN program, and so we did.
I’ve been a RN for 40 years now & still enthusiastic about what I do! I’m still learning everyday & never “bored.” My cousin just retired after 40 years in L& D. And yes, we both married & have children & grandchildren.
Nursing has been a truly wonderful career.
Davey Do
10,666 Posts
Nursing was attractive, in that it was a highly respectable profession. And getting into nursing at the age of 26 and never being married, I thought it would be a great way to meet women, which it was. Dates were aplenty, and I met all three of my wives at hospitals where I worked.
If memory serves me right, in 1983 when I got into nursing as an LPN, only 7% were male. By 1990, when I became an RN, the percentage of males in nursing had increased to 12%.
And talk about inexpensive, when I started junior college in 1976, the cost was $10.50/semester hour! The hospital where I worked funded my tuition in the late '80's, paying a whopping $600/semester!
As a final note, MLTF, don't feel as though you need to apologize for any negativity. Had I gotten into the nursing field some years later, and was still practicing, I might feel as you do.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel.