Nursing

As the story goes in nursing, it wasn’t easy. My privilege is showing, but during high school I had the opportunity to take college credit courses through a local community college. I was told then that it would “really put me ahead.” Being the overachiever I was, I took as many as I could, thinking it would save me time and money in the long run. It did neither of those things. I took medical terminology, anatomy and physiology, and others. While it gave me an introduction into using the medical language, it did little to prepare me or get me ahead into getting into nursing school. After high school graduation, I applied for the CNA program at the nursing home my mom worked as a nurse at. I completed that, and then started working as a CNA in a long term care/memory care locked unit. I spent the next 3 years there working nights, while I also attended school full time.

I’m not sure why I stayed working in that shitty shit hole for so long. Being abused by demented old grandmas, and being a target for sexual abuse for nasty old grandpas. That placed was a cesspool of STD’s, scabies, and bed bugs for the residents. I finally decided it was time to go when I could no longer tolerate being bullied by CNA’s that had been there longer than me who couldn’t get jobs anywhere else d/t their behavior in the workplace. I applied at my dream hospital, where I hoped to someday work as a nurse.

I applied, interviewed, and received a job offer for a CNA role in “nursing resources” department, or “float pool.” I was ecstatic, here was my in, my opportunity. I trained to get my “CNA II” and started training in every department. I thrived in this role, I loved the variety and the flexibility. I had the opportunity to cross train for other roles: unit clerk, EKG tech, pt. transport, telemetry monitoring. At this point my schooling hit a hard stop, I was rejected from the nursing program at the college I had been attending for the last 4 years.

I guess I should back track a little. Because of my grades in high school and someone in the government, I was able to go to this community college for free for 2 years, but I wasn’t allowed to take whatever classes I wanted, I had to take courses towards obtaining a transfer degree. After the two years I was then able to focus on nursing program prerequisites. I finished those and applied to nursing school for the first time. I don’t know if it was my naivety or just plain stupidity that I only applied for the one program, but I did not get in. It really is quite comical to me now, but at the time I was beyond upset. I had worked so hard, for so many years, what did I do wrong? I asked myself, over and over. What could I have done differently?

After being denied entry like a kid at an R-rated movie, I decided to persevere. I stayed with school, I repeated classes to get A’s instead of B’s (insert eyeroll emoji). I worked on community service hours, I continued furthering my skill set at work. Once the next year came around and time to apply again, I learned my lesson (or so I thought). I applied to probably 3-5 schools. For perspective, at this time I had a 3.9 GPA, 5 years of healthcare experience, volunteer time, and excellent recommendations from my managers at work. You can probably see where this is going, I was rejected from 3 programs, and waitlisted at 2.