KevinSauls.com

Well, I’m about a month into my MSN program and I have to tell you I’m more than a little disheartened. The whole process has so far been very disjointed. Since I’m going into nursing education, the school offered me a service cancellable loan through the Nurse Faculty Loan Program. The problem is that nobody knew how to go about handling the loan. I finally got the money last week, after much prodding and complaining. Nobody seemed to know what was going on, and nobody was taking responsibility. Doesn’t speak well to the school, in my view.

On to classes. I can read the damn PowerPoints; I don’t need to drive an hour each way to have someone do that for me. And I have classmates who drive even further. The concept that we have to sit in a classroom while the instructor reads slides, with little elaboration, is disrespectful of my time and energies. I want to be taught. In the advanced assessment class, it would be nice if we actually did some assessments—or at least got demonstrations of them – rather than simply be told about what we’re supposed to do.

It’s not much different in the other classes. The patho guy pulls crap out of the clear blue to test us on. It’s not a matter of whether we know the material; it’s a game of ‘can I stump them?’ The questions don’t test my familiarity and mastery of the material; they are just a bunch of minutiae he managed to dredge up.

But, I think the thing that irks me the worst, and scares me in many ways, is the lack of instruction that is taking place. As I said, they don’t teach, they read PowerPoints. As a nursing education major, I have to ask whether this is what I will be taught: not how to teach, but how to create PowerPoint slides and read them back to the class. I fear the latter. And we wonder why education isn’t what it used to be.

While wandering around the ‘net, I found this rather intriguing link that got me to thinking about the question of the title.

You’d think as a practical nursing instructor I would be constantly asked that question, and constantly recruiting for the profession. And, you’d think by now that I’d have a whole list of reasons why nursing is a grand profession. I don’t. Not any of it.

You see, I recognize a couple of, I think, important factors. First, I believe that to truly find happiness in any job you must truly have a passion for it. The other factor is that each of us will have anywhere from two to five careers in our working lives. Nursing might be the job that provides you great satisfaction for now, but at some point in the future, you values and interests will change and you will go off in new directions, seeking once more your happiness. Monika, the author of the afore mentioned blog, is a “recovering IT person”. At some point, she was vitally interested in IT. Her values changed and she moved in a new direction. I’ve been a nurse through most of my career, though I’ve dabbled in other things, and I keep returning to it. For me, though, the return is economic. I don’t have the wherewithal to make a substantive career change, so I stay with what pays.

Now, I know. Nursing has great opportunities. You can go in so many directions with nursing. You can move anywhere and be assured a job. The money isn’t bad. And the list goes on. But regardless of what perks it might have, if it isn’t really what you, in your heart-of-hearts, want to do, if you don’t find satisfaction in your work, you won’t find happiness there. It’s that changing of values that brings second-career people into the field.

My hat is off to Monika and the many, many others who have shifted to join the ranks of nursing. I think their presence is fantastic for the field, as they will bring a far greater diversity to the profession, and will bring a different perspective on what it means to be a professional.

Despite the fact that I’ve begun working on my MSN in order to teach (at the RN level) if someone offered me a great IT job today, I’d be gone ….