Friday, January 6, 2012

My big news is...

I am going back to school.  I got my acceptance letter last week and class starts January 25th. When I told my mother and my sister, they both had the same reaction, "Oh, to become a midwife?" I laughed and said "almost." The goal is to become a nurse, ideally working in L&D (labor and delivery). The tentative plan is to do my science pre-requisites at a local college slowly, taking one or two courses a semester. That should take about 18 months.  After that I would continue on to an accelerated BSN program. There are several to choose from in the area. If everything goes according to plan, which rarely happens, I could theoretically be done in three years, January of 2015.
I have been thinking about becoming a nurse for quite some time, but was always nervous about committing time, money and energy to this project. What gave me the push to go for it is that I have the rare opportunity to take college courses pretty much for free, a benefit of my husband's job. I am still a little anxious how I am going to manage school with four kids but then I remind myself I am doing this slowly. I am not committing myself to anything beyond a course or two this semester and then we will see how it goes.
My decision to become a nurse of all things is definitely connected to my interest in birth. I love working as a doula but am recognizing that it does not fit into my life right now. I don't have the entrepreneurial skill it takes to network and market myself in order to find clients. And the unpredictability of being on call and potentially being gone for 24 hours at a time on short notice does not work for me at the moment.
Even though, I had a homebirth this time, I recognize that the majority of women will continue to give birth in hospitals. I hope to be able to make a difference one woman at a time by being an encouraging and supportive voice on their journey to becoming a mother.
But I am far away from that. Right now I will be focusing on passing Chemistry and Statistics...and more immediately, getting ready for shabbos. Have a wonderful shabbos!

1 comment:

  1. wow! i'm sure that was a big decision-- mazel tov on that- and wishing you that everything goes smoothly-

    ReplyDelete