LORELLELPN

Shannon, I love nursing! I love my job. I feel good about myself every night when I come home. I used to work for a very large corporation of long term care facilities in Maryland. I now live in North Carolina, and went to work for a NON-PROFIT home. It's very large and beautiful and the best feeling in the world is coming home at night and knowing that I went out to work that day, and I earned money to help support my family while delivering care to those in need and nobody's getting fat off of it. I always said that the grass was not greener anywhere and I was wrong. I better than anyone know about long hours and hard days without going into a list of past history I will simply say I had a hard job. The facility where I work is the smoothest run, most friendly environment I have ever been in, and I plan to stay until I retire about 40 years from now. It is difficult being a nurse, but it is also very rewarding, even in setting that are not ideal. There is always that one patient who says, thank you and really means it. There's always that family that needs you to help them understand and to vent to you. There is laughter and tears, and anger and heartbreak, there are ethical challenges that you face, every spectum of emotion and then some goes into being a nurse over the course of your career. You will love it, and you will hate it everyday is different. But when you really "feel" it is when, somehow in some way no matter how big or how small you find out that you have touched someone elses life and that is what it's all about. For the record, I encourage every young person who is interested to go for it. I took my Practical Nursing Training while I was in High School we also had adult students, it was 2 years and it was hard, and when I graduated from it I was 17, there is nothing wrong with being a young nurse so long as who ever you are you maintain a professional attitude. Which is all I have to say about the statement someone else posted here about a 19 year old. there are a lot of things to learn from people who are that critical of others-like how not to be! Good Luck with your schooling, your boards and your future career as a nurse, you sound very intelligent and have a willingness to hear others point of view which will make you a great assest to our profession!