Ha ha, I'm not that arrogant. Really. I just read something kind of enlightening, though, about how we only feel we are capable of things to which we have been exposed. I'll give you the link to Lisa's blog the old fashioned way (blogger is driving me INSANE with this linking business), and I think you should read it. Just come back when you're done. http://www.livejournal.com/users/lisarene/2459.html
See, I'm not really the type of person who's dealt with a whole lot of failure. I'd guess that's because I don't try to do too many things without first being sure of my likely success. Call that a cop-out if you want, but it's honest. And I don't think I'm in the minority here. Anyway, when I made my college decision, I was 17. Most of us were, true, but when you think about how young you really are at 17, you realize how stupid it is that you are allowed to hold the rest of your life in your very own hands, pretty much unsupervised. Ha ha. I chose a safe place to go to school, studied a rather safe field, and graduated with honors feeling very ............. not accomplished? I don't know if that's the word or not. I knew that I had done well in a variety of different ways, but I also felt like I probably hadn't challenged myself all that much.
I had had an interest in nursing, for the few brief moments that I allowed myself to consider all the sciences, labs, and - oh, good gracious! - giving injections. But I sort of closed that corner of my mind, decided I didn't have what it took to 'hack' all those classes, and plugged through my chosen degree. I couldn't possibly do that, I thought. Truth be told, I didn't want to do that. Not that I didn't want to be a nurse, just that I had seen those nursing students opening and closing the library on Saturdays, not to mention every day of the week. I knew they spent countless hours in the lab for zero credit hours. And those crazy girls were up at, like, 5:30 on Tuesday mornings for clinical! Are you serious? Yeah, that's too hard for me. Of course, at the time, the laziness of it all wasn't as apparent; I was focusing on the "I-couldn't-possibly-do-that" part.
But now I'm in nursing school. I began this journey just one short year after finishing my social work degree. I started my nursing classes in the summer of 2002, with my first clinical in the fall. And I had to get up at 5:00, not 5:30, to beat the DC area traffic. I had to learn to do a whole lot more than just give an injection. I had to learn to use my hands and perform a skill, something entirely foreign to me in my social work world. Probably the worst thing I've lived through has been the clinical instructors - all too ready to correct, not so prepared to teach. (Of course, I've blogged about that before.) I used to panic the night before and morning of clinicals. I mean, physically sick, sweating, unable to sleep, flushed cheeks, shaking hands - the whole bit. I had never learned a skill and been on the spot to perform it correctly (with Ms. Eagle Eye instructor watching), knowing that if I didn't someone could actually come to serious harm. It blew my mind. Get corrected under those circumstances a few times, and holy cow, you don't want to try ANYTHING new!
Wow, my palms are sweaty just typing this!
My point to all of that jibber jabber, and I am about to wrap this up, is that nursing school has by far been the most difficult experience of my life. I would rather run eleven miles than go to clinical, to this day. But the fact that I have been forced into the situation again and again with eventual success has showed me that I can do a lot more than I thought I could. I even look back at those times that I couldn't sleep and I think, What a moron I was. It's not that hard. And now I honestly do feel like there isn't much I couldn't do.
If I want to...
No comments:
Post a Comment