.watch out.

Professors keep reminding us that nursing has come a long way. We should be grateful to be studying at the time we are! Then they counter that piece of information by telling us many of the procedures we're learning now will have changed or be obsolete in 5 years from now. I'm definitely in for the long-haul through the education department!
I don't mind...I love what I'm learning.

We started our clinicals at the Dixie Regional Hospital this week. It was totally different than I anticipated...in a good way. I really enjoyed it! Some nurses were incredible at their jobs--on top of it all, making their patients feel important, foreseeing some risky situations, etc. Other nurses....well, I'm sure you've had a not-so-good nurse at one point in your life, so I'll spare details. Let's just say those nurses made me feel worlds better about my decision to become a nurse, boosting my confidence in my abilities. I shouldn't be too quick to say this, maybe I'll be one of them! At least I know I'm doing everything I can now to prevent becoming one of them.
In other words, my studies are a prophylactic treatment of becoming a crappy nurse.
Ha. I'm eating, drinking, and sleeping nursing right now.
For a short time, I resented nursing because it was keeping me from "preparing" for a mission. I've found a way around that obstacle. Preparing for anything takes time! It isn't instantaneous, or an event. Preparation is what you're doing from day to day to enable yourself with information/skills/training/knowledge etc. to encounter a situation in the future! In other words, who cares how busy I am now? No matter how busy, I should always be preparing for the future. Otherwise, I'm too busy. I'm never going to have time to just prepare for a mission, or marriage, or children, or callings, or anything for that matter.
What's important in my life right now is balance.
Balance in school, gospel education, family, social life, etc.
School has never been as crazy in my entire life as it's been the past 2 weeks. The wonderful miracle of it all, is that I've done everything that's been required of me, and done it well. Along with school, I've made time for gospel preparation that I desperately need right now (study, prayer, institute), and have indefinitely reaped the rewards.
I feel empowered.
Right now, BALANCE=A VERY HAPPY LIFE FOR JESSICA.
A lesson well-learned now may save me some worry later.
Anyway, my point of telling you this is that I don't resent nursing at all! In fact, I've never been more sure of my decision to be a nurse than recently. I loved everything about being in the hospital, surrounded with real-life situations of everything we've been learning in school, being able to apply my knowledge and actually feel like I'm helping someone. Which, in some respects, has made it harder to think about leaving. It would be so easy to finish out next year and just be finished with my RN, rather than go through all the grief of trying to find a job/get re-accepted when I get home...but all I can tell myself in these moments of doubt is Heavenly Father will provide a way for that which He's asked me to do.
Incredibly simple, but entirely true.

Besides.
Compared to 18 months, I've got all the time in the world to figure out nursing. I'll count my lucky stars someday when I look in the mirror and see this face staring right back at me. I'll know at that moment that I've made at least 2 right decisions in my life:
serving a mission, and going to nursing school.