Anyone else feel like their family is not as supportive of your decision to chose nursing as a career?
I am currently 26, almost 27 and have a very good paying job (Considering I do not have a degree). I have entertained the idea of pursuing nursing for about 3-4 years but circumstances wouldn't really allow. Now that they do, it seems as if my family, in particular my mother thinks I have gone out of my mind wanting to do something as difficult as nursing.
My fiance is super supportive and is doing everything needed to make sure that I can still work and attend school. But my mom seems just annoyed by the whole notion and would rather me just stay where I am at.
Mike and Barlowjb, Thanks so much for the responses....it means a lot.
I believe my turning point in wanting to do something to help people is when my husband unexpectedly died. Since then I have inside wanted to help others but had to get over my own issues first. During the time between his passing and the last summer when I really made the decision I was just trying to get through the day and provide for my kids.
I got laid off last summer and had to take a job I HATED with a passion in the same industry and actually made less. We made it work. I thought hey, I need to go back to school. Thankfully the job that laid me off called me back. Now that I have more disposable income I can go back to school. I work in the finance industry and I dont work in sales...i work in operations so we are always the first to go when layoffs happen.
My mother doesnt see it that way but you all are right. She will eventually come around.....even if its rough for a while.
I'm 28 and currently in graduate school for physical anthropology, but I'm leaving to become a nurse. My father is completely against it, and thinks I should stay where I am (a prestigeous, private university) and persue a career in academia. It's what I've been groomed for my whole life, and anything less to him is abject failure.
I was just accepted into my first-choice ABSN program, and his only reply was: "Well, that's what you wanted."
Nursing was always something I'd mulled-over as a "back-up plan" (or so I thought), but one can only ignore a calling for so long. I made the decision last year to leave the academic rat-race and begin applying to nursing schools, so I could take a chance on my dream. I want to make an immediate, vital difference in the lives of others, and I'm tired of sitting around debating minutiae with myopic scholars in their ivory tower.
I'll still be doing rigorous science and will have plenty of opportunities to undertake original research, especially if I go on to be an NP (or do graduate work in nursing), but my family doesn't see it that way.
They only see me trading an "unusual, interesting, and exotic" career for one which, in their words, is "ordinary, plebeian, and mechanical."
Oh, and the kicker--if I was really serious about this, I'd just become a doctor. THAT they could respect.
OMG, I feel like I am reading about myself. I have been in academia forever. but really have no interest in becoming a professor or researcher. I once thought about being a doctor but I never had good experience with doctors. Most of them seem ignorant and often fail to see the bigger picture in a patient's diagnosis. I want to become a NP as well, maybe family practice. I just can't convince my dad to support me and his opinion means a lot to me. He has always been the one who provides me financial support and he keeps pushing and pushing me into more prestigious school until I told him I don't want to be in prestigious schools, I just want to be in a place where I feel comfortable....
]My family supports me now, but when I was first considering nursing about 20 years ago, my mom would say "oooh, nursing is so hard, you have to take chemistry and oooh that's so hard' (a woman with a 10th grade education, mind you) and being young I listened.
now all these years later, deciding I was going to do it, she started up with all that again. Well, I didn't listen and guess what.... I am getting an A in chemistry!!! yeah, it's hard but I CAN DO it!
So, my point is, DON'T listen to what other people say....follow your heart. I so regret not doing so back then, I would be a nurse now!
good luck on whatever you decide....but remember, we only go around once in this life.....make it what you want it to be!
slmmarsh
36 Posts
Mike and Barlowjb, Thanks so much for the responses....it means a lot.
I believe my turning point in wanting to do something to help people is when my husband unexpectedly died. Since then I have inside wanted to help others but had to get over my own issues first. During the time between his passing and the last summer when I really made the decision I was just trying to get through the day and provide for my kids.
I got laid off last summer and had to take a job I HATED with a passion in the same industry and actually made less. We made it work. I thought hey, I need to go back to school. Thankfully the job that laid me off called me back. Now that I have more disposable income I can go back to school. I work in the finance industry and I dont work in sales...i work in operations so we are always the first to go when layoffs happen.
My mother doesnt see it that way but you all are right. She will eventually come around.....even if its rough for a while.