My goodness, I cannot believe its been so long since I last wrote on my (neglected!) blog. School ended and I've been so busy trying to catch up on all the non-school-related stuff in my life.
What I also realized, was that its now been a full year since I permanently left my first career. I wrote about my thoughts on this on my last day of work. Some bloggers know how to make a neat little link -- I just copy/paste the entire link... http://nurse2bmidcareerchange.blogspot.ca/2012/06/last-day-in-my-current-career.html
What a difference a year makes. For the better.
I've learned so much since I started nursing school. I've grown as a person, I've experienced emotions on clinical shifts like I've never before experienced at any time, during my first career. As a very emotional, feeling person, (not necessarily expressed outwardly, but very much alive on the inside!), I find it incredible that feeling and expressing emotion is part of my new career. Both the negative and the positive feelings.
It made me realize how completely devoid of feeling and caring my first career was. My colleagues were always great, fun and intelligent people to work with (and I expect that to stay the same in my nursing career), I got to travel to some neat places on my beloved red diplomatic passport (yes, I LOVED that perk!), but the actual work was so individual, merely process-focused and deadline-driven.
While there will be many parallels and many 'transferrable' skills that I'll bring to nursing from strategic communications, the core-focus, the PEOPLE, will be the biggest change. I don't have my head in the clouds and think that every interaction will be pleasant -- I've got enough life experience to know the realities of that -- even in my non-people focused foreign policy strat comms career, I still had to deal with a huge variety of people. But when the 'end product' is something like holding a newborn, healthy baby in my arms, or watching a tiny baby grow and thrive in the NICU and eventually leave in its parents arms -- that's satisfaction.
I just never got that same thrill, joy or job-satisfaction when I saw my press release/backgrounder issued and it made the lead story on the national news, or press conference go really well. It felt good, yes, like a job well-done, but empty. I just wanted to do medical stuff and be a nurse...
Life is good.
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