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When I started as a new acute care NP in critical care, as we established before - I knew nothing. Which of course isn't actually true.
But any time you start something new, do something you haven't tried before, especially starting from zero - that's how it feels sometimes.
I was raised, correctly, on David Bowie. I discovered his music when I was 10, and he is still my North star. And to that end he said something as advice to creative people that I took very much to heart and use as a personal bellweather:
“If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”
I thought about the other things I could be doing. Easier things. Safer things. Did I go back to school to become an NP much later than most people do (age is a number and doesn't matter, but I was born in the 1970s) because it would be easy or safe? No.
None of it is ever easy. Anyone who decided to take on and conquer nursing will tell you. Nurses are often accused of being "mean girls", or super Type A personalities. If you aren't naturally one of these things. Or obsessive compulsive, or paranoid, or neuro atypical - by the time you get in to nursing school, and with luck - finish nursing school, you will be.
We already talked about how anything less than a "B" is a failure. They warn you about this on day one. They tell you that half of the people around you will not be there at the end. They will quit or fail, or...?
This journey I guess starts with the why of it all. Why do this? Why do we do hard things? I couldn't tell you. And I have a Bachelor's of Science in Psychology. So I could actually tell you.
Fine. I'll tell you.
I never wanted to do this. I tried my whole life not to. After high school I was so many things. It was 1991. Which was as great as you think it was if you weren't there. And I lived in a suburb of Seattle. So, now you understand. But I really didn't know what I wanted to do. Well I did, but I didn't know how to go about it. Through high school I worked at a performing arts center. I became a novice lighting designer and I started working on the side for a local ballet company and an opera company. I started taking classes at the community college (across the street from my high school) in my senior year and was accumulating AP credits and college credits. I wanted to get a degree in theatre design.
But I didn't do that. I didn't know how, and I didn't have any help, nor the drive to figure it out myself.
My mom was a nurse. She went to community college. She got an associates of nursing. That was the most college in my family anyone in my immediate family had accomplished. And while I started out my school career very neurotic and single minded, focused on my 4.0 GPA - I didn't end high school that way. Without much extra study I passed easily, but SATs weren't a focus, college wasn't a focus. It didn't seem obtainable. Besides I had jobs already. I was doing what I liked, already. So I drifted along for awhile.
And then there is a the part that many daughters understand. I did not want to become my mother. My mother worked incessantly. We weren't close really because I didn't ever have any time with her. She was at work. And when she wasn't at work she was tired. Like many a Gen X - I raised myself. And my grandmother (mom's mom) who lived with us much of my life, was the person around the most. And my older sister. I was raised by strong women - that mostly weren't my mom. Her life wasn't anything I aspired to. But I didn't know what I wanted. But I wanted something else.
The early 90s were great for so many reasons. One of them being the early Internet. I discovered it and I made a zillion online friends. And I got in my Volkswagen Cabriolet and I went to go see them. In California, in Texas, in Minnesota. In North Carolina and Maine. And they came to see me. From Canada, and Kansas, Las Vegas... It was astonishingly stupid, and dangerous and fun. I was fortunate. Nothing bad happened. I learned a lot. I went a lot of places. I met amazing and horrible people. I had experiences. That's what you can do when you are young.
While my cohort were were in school. I was an intern at a Las Vegas newspaper in their burgeoning online department. I was a delivery driver in the Twin Cities - a really bad one, because it's very easy to get lost in Minneapolis and St. Paul with only a street atlas. I went to goth clubs in Raleigh, I saw Prince at First Ave, and when I came home I stayed out all night in the rain kissing the wrong people at the right time and then spent the day at Lollapalooza with Siouxsie and Trent and Ice T. I had so much fun. But no purpose. Lots of life experience. But no academic bona fides.
But I still believed in Bowie's advice. I did a lot of things that made me feel like I was out of my depth. One of the last ones was moving to Georgia. Oh and I went to a David Bowie concert the last night before I left the PNW for the South. My beautiful, green, mossy, mountainous home surrounded by water and rain forests and all that I knew - I left it for heat and humidity and the promise of something else I won't go in to. But it lead to this. I had a support system and found family for most of the years before. But then I had to take care of someone. And realized that my understanding of nursing and my curiosity about science and physiology would serve me well if I gave in. And went to nursing school. It was also the promise of a stable career that even though I was late in life to be starting - would embrace me anyway, and benefit from my varied life experiences.
So I took the plunge.
But I was many years removed from academia. My AP credits were still good and served me well. But I had to enroll and start from scratch with prerequisites, mostly math and science. To gain a spot in a reputable and highly rated nursing program at a state school the word on the street was you needed a 4.0 GPA in your pre-reqs. It was the beginning of the many hurdles I would face on my way to becoming a critical care NP. But I knew I was "about in the right place to do something exciting."