What a crazy time! We spent our 4th of July weekend moving across the metroplex to a fun little duplex...it is a great place with a big yard for Jasper and so much more space inside than our old apartment. Plus it is not on the third floor. I can't tell you how appreciative I am of that fact when Jasper needs to pee at 3am.
We are pretty much settled in now with just a few random items still needing a place (or a trashcan). Moving in really takes a long time when life outside of the move doesn't slow down. School keeps rapidly firing the work at me, and Nate's duties at his job actually increased right about the time we moved, making more demands on his time and energy...so the fact that we don't still have rooms full of unpacked boxes is pretty significant.
This past Wednesday marked the beginning of a new 5-week summer semester for me, and after only one day (and several hours of reading assignments), I feel like I have a renewed spirit about this whole pursuit of a nursing degree. Up to this point I've become increasingly down-trodden, feeling crushed by the workload and discouraged about the difference between my picture of the nursing world and the reality that I've been observing in the hospitals. Without knowing it, my scope of vision had been slowing narrowing until I was only thinking of nursing in terms of a list of skills I needed to master (quickly!) and an extensive list of dos and don'ts for every shift. Not very inspiring or encouraging. I had lost sight of the bigger picture: the place of a nurse in society, the significant role the nurse has played in history, the overarching goals and priorities of nursing, and the general sense of pride a nurse can take in her/his work: knowing it is an act of service done for the betterment of a single patient, and therefore of all mankind.
I just finished reading an article in the American Journal of Nursing by L.L. Dock and am feeling very inspired by her words. She wrote about our duty to continually be advocating for the fair treatment of everyone, not just ourselves, fellow workers, and patients...like our role as nurses expands far beyond the hospital or clinic we work in, reaching out into other professions and into society in general. For example, she wrote that a newspaper had printed an article comparing the grossly underpaid teaching profession to the nursing field. She chided the nurses who had responded to the article by pointing out the inherent dangers of the nurse's work as justification for the salary difference, saying they should instead have used the opportunity to advocate for the teachers and say, "Yes, they are underpaid! We should do something about it!" The general tone of the article was just so...noble, I guess. The way she wrote about the work of the nurse...to be associated with an emerging profession that is generally aimed at helping, encouraging, uplifting and supporting people rather than doing whatever it takes to scramble up the proverbial professional ladder first creates such a sense of fulfillment for me. Not that I am above scrambling up the ladder, but that my profession expects me to be. Even though she wrote the article in 1913, I feel like her words are as relevant today as they were the day she penned them.
I have so much work to do today...I've got to get back at it. I just couldn't help taking a few minutes to (for the first time since I started nursing school) vent the pride I take in my line of work.
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