In the almost eight years since I started this blog, I have had a lot of changes in life priorities. From being a hardcore Nobel Prize-winning chemist, to becoming a physician, to being a mom with ample time for my “grandma hobbies”.
I remember asking my college roommate what she envisioned for her future, and it was something along the lines of living a quiet life and teaching abroad. I thought this was ridiculous. Why waste your talents and intelligence that way? Why not do something to make a big impact on people and the world?
Only after having my second child did I realize that I was the one being ridiculous. That life does not revolve around doing everything for everyone and all the time. I realized that the quiet life IS the goal, but that doesn’t mean I cannot pursue lofty goals on the side.
I have worked and shadowed in several specialties over the years, and realized a few things: I love performing procedures, I love the OR (operating room), and I love learning about my colleagues. But regardless of the specialty, I easily get bored with the “bread and butter” cases.
I had the most fun in neurosurgery. The teams, the vibe, the pathology. But what I loved, was the more uncommon tumor or cranial mesh removals. The interventional cath lab cases for clot removal in the brain. But not so much the neck and spine surgeries that made up the majority of cases.
Seeing Jacob struggling to find his fit in medical school, and my failed medical school application cycle (that I was so relieved not to have received any interviews for), showed me that medical school would not be the right fit for me at this point in my life.
I took my first nursing class online summer of 2024, and I still felt rather ambivalent. Maybe I could be a nurse practitioner and still be able to treat and prescribe and manage. So I took another break while I continued to work in healthcare. After working for a while (and completely failing to balance home life with work and an infant), I took a break. I was so ashamed of how much I struggled at work, and stepped back from working until I could recoup. I re-enrolled for classes in the fall of 2025, and I am finally feeling like I am on the right path.
Taking the nursing prerequisites has been so much more fulfilling (learning about anatomy and lifespan development vs. organic chemistry and physics) than those for med. It is also extremely frustrating that a lot of the classes involving the humanity of medicine are not required for medical school, and to me, it is a great disservice to patients and providers.
All of this to say that, while both professions are important and intellectually challenging, the scheduling flexibility, opportunity to change specialties, and humanistic approach to medicine make me feel more confident pursuing nursing as a career.