I don’t feel like this all the time, but every now and again, I think things like:
What if I get my R.N. and then it turns out that I actually hate being a nurse?
What if I hate having hours dictated to me after all these years of self-employment?
What if I don’t actually end up having compassion for my patients?
What if all the charting/paperwork is too annoying?
Or what if I get into nursing school and school becomes super overwhelming?”
It’s impossible to know the future, but it IS possible to look at what I know about my past, and that can help inform the future.
So.
I know that I am a good student and I know that I can handle a pretty heavy class load (I did 17 credit hours my first semester in college and still got good grades), so I think I can handle nursing school.
On the compassion front: I can look back through my life and see lots of situations where I had compassion for people who needed help. If that’s been true in the past, it will likely be true in the future as well. Plus, I can choose a field of nursing where I think compassion will come more easily (I don’t think I would have as much compassion working in a cosmetic medical field as I would in a more medically-necessary field.)
I know I will be annoyed by the excessive charting work, but I also know that I am able to see that everything has upsides and downsides (nothing is perfect!) and I know that I have been able to hang in there with the annoying record-keeping that homeschooling and self-employment involve.
I think I will be ok on the working hours front because I have the freedom to be picky about what jobs I take. If I don’t like the environment or the hours, I can always switch jobs.
And that’s how I talk myself down from my worries!
I’m uncertain about my future, which – aren’t we all?
But with my husband now living in assisted living, which is eating into my savings, a precarious Social Security future, two autoimmune diseases and the winding down of the years in which I will be able to earn an income, I have to wonder what my own future looks like. It’s at this point that I hold onto Proverbs 3:5-6!
I’m very uncertain about my future life as a widow. How will I cope with all of the things? It makes me feel overwhelmed to think on it. I have to remind myself often that I don’t have to learn everything in one day, nor make decisions about some big things right this minute. I’m giving myself a LOT of grace.
I’m uncertain about what I’ll do after all of my kids are in school. Years ago I assumed I’d go back to work full-time, but now I see that it’s probably unrealistic for that to be a good choice for my family. Do I work part-time with set hours? Do I volunteer? Do I do something like Shipt shopping with flexible time? I have no idea, but I just hope that my husband and I are completely on the same page about whichever direction we go.
My daughter (R.N., B.S.N.) HATED charting, care plans, etc. (basically the “paper” work of nursing) when she was in nursing school. She is now a clinical manager and a large majority of her job is….wait for it! PAPER WORK! Ha! For whatever reason, she now loves doing this part of her job. She says it is a surprise to her too, but she really enjoys doing her care plans and such. So…you never know!
I’m uncertain whether this # 3 Covid shot will protect me better. My Covid antibodies from first 2 shots are unusually low. No one can say why.
Just a word re nursing charting. At least you know have the aid of computers. In the “olden days” when I was young in nursing, it was all handwritten so what you will face won’t come anywhere near that. So take heart!! Compassion is a character trait sublime and I don’t think you can ever turn it off !
Lol. I can still chart WAY faster and MUCH more accurately “by hand” than by computer! The drawback is “accessibility and portability” has made everything different; I get that. But I’m still so very frustrated!
Nursing now is so unlike when I started (late 1970s), and I so remember my Mom saying to me at that time that nursing was nothing much like it was for her when she started in the 1950!