Mary’s Pad

The Trends and Issues class that I am taking this Summer is intended to prepare us for life outside of school. I realized how real and valuable that preparation was today.

As part of the class requirements, I have to go through the process of applying for a job… choose a floor or department that I want to work in at the Medical Center, prepare my resume, write an application letter, and send it in to my instructor. The culmination of this part is attending an actual interview with the instructor.

At first, when I read through the syllabus and saw this, I was a bit disgruntled. Of course, as all students frequently do, I felt I was being imposed upon and my valuable time being wasted on a make-believe task that would do me no good. I mean, come on, I could be playing the Wii or something…

But as I started the process of putting together my resume, and actually thinking about where I wanted to work and how to sell myself in that situation, I totally got engaged in the process. I dug out and dusted my old Curriculum Vitae, as we call it back home, and set about reformatting it into a resume worthy of presenting to a prospective employer. It was a revealing process for me because it brought back all the things I have done and accomplished that I frequently forget. It was an interesting challenge deciding how to turn my Physics-heavy resume into one that said “hey, I will be an excellent nurse! I understand classical and quantum mechanics, I know what a Hamiltonian is, and can distinguish between a canonical and a grand-canonical ensemble, and I am no stranger to entropy… surely I can dress wounds and start IVs!”

The next thing was to decide what floor to apply to. Because I was engaged in this process and determined to make it authentic for myself, it forced me to confront the dilemma that I have been pondering for a year now - should I go straight where my heart is - nursing in the ER, or should I start with a stint in Med Surg? I don’t need to make a final decision yet, but it did force me to think more deliberately about what I’m going to do; for this process I went with my heart, and applied to the ER.

After everything was sent out, I had to schedule my interview, anticipate and prepare for the questions, and dig out my decent clothes! At this point in my training it’s easy to anticipate what questions a nursing recruiter will ask - why nursing, why this hospital, why this department, what are your strengths, what are your weaknesses, where do you see yourself x years from now, how would you handle such and such ethical or legal situation, what questions do you have… ad nauseum ad infinitum. It’s a more mature variation of the questions they asked me when I went meekly carrying all my papers, with my heart pounding, knocking for admittance to the classroom and hoping they would let me in, the same questions each new instructor asks each of us in a different way, in a less formal setting, during evals… it’s this seemingly deep need we all have to understand each other, to dig out what has made a person decide to take on a lifetime of caring as a career.

I lay awake last night and remembered my answers to those questions when they were asked of me more than two years ago. I thought about how far I have come, the challenges I have faced, the lessons I have learned, the role models that I have acquired and admired and yearned to emulate, the soul-searching that I have done many nights after clinicals… how much I have grown as a person, and as a nursing student. I asked myself those questions, and knew that my answers were clearer, more concrete, more realistic, more mature. I realized that I know myself better and in a different way than I did before I stepped into Nursing School. I went to the interview today, and sat across from my instructor, and answered those questions clearly, with a new light and a new understanding of myself.

I walked out of the interview, with heavy thoughts on my mind, but with a light heart, and I think today I made a brand new realization… I am going to be a nurse!