nursingforsocialjustice

I remember being 15 and telling my best friend at the time that I liked every person that I met. In reflection, I think that what I meant was I saw the good in every person and found something likable in every person that I had ever met. Although I have never been an extrovert (I have never been the life of the party), I really like being around people. It seems like a blinked and I went from being a weird kid to being a 34 year old woman with 4 beautiful kids. I often think about the events in my life that led me to the place that I am now. I think about how lucky I am that I happened to choose a career that fit my deep desire to help the world and also fits with my personal like of almost every person.

I happened upon nursing almost by accident. When I was a kid my mother was an LPN in Calgary. She worked permanent nights until she went off work on disability when I was in Grade 9. My family moved to Calgary in 1990, a time when there were massive nursing lay-offs by the Alberta Conservative government to decrease the provincial deficit (some say Alberta never fully recovered from this massive loss of nurses). I remember that it was extremely difficult for my mother to find a job when we moved to Calgary. When we lived I do not think I ever thought that I would become a nurse. I thought that nursing was about changing bedding and wiping old people’s bums until I was 24. I remember a friend (one who is now about to finish nursing school) telling me that she wanted to pursue a nursing degree after already completing a degree in International Relations and thinking what a complete waste of time and money, just to end up wiping people’s bums. I think less than a year later I was applying to the Accelerated Track Bachelor of Nursing program at the University of Calgary.

The first time that I had even thought about pursuing a nursing degree was a chance happening at The Women’s Show (a woman centered convention)in either late 2005 or early 2006. At the time I was volunteering at the Calgary Women’s Centre. They needed someone to staff their booth at the convention  for the morning. One of the perks was free admission to the convention and free lunch. I am pretty sure I volunteered mostly because of the free lunch. After my time staffing the booth I walked around to peruse all the booths. I happened upon a University of Calgary Nursing booth. I think it was actually the Nursing School’s dean at the time that started talking to me about the school’s accelerated program. I really had never thought about doing another undergraduate degree, much less nursing. I am pretty sure that I told him I was not interested because I already had two bachelor degrees that I was having great difficulty attaining gainful employment from. At the time I had just gotten my first “real” job at a residential program for low functioning children living with Autism Spectrum Disorder. I had recently come to the realization that the most I may be able to achieve with my Bachelor of Psychology and Sociology degrees was working full-time for $27 000/year getting beat up and cleaning up poop.

I was at a real crux in my life. At 24, I had been graduated from university for almost three years and felt completely lost and like a huge failure after going full steam ahead to finish my two undergrad degrees by the time I was 21. I felt like I had so much potential but lost it somehow. I think I was continuing to make excuses about why I did not want to pursue a nursing degree when the person I was chatting with told me about the Accelerated Track nursing program. He told me that admission was for those students who already had an undergraduate degree (check) and completely based on GPA (I had a very high one). I went home that day thinking that maybe it was time to try something else, something that had a clear job at the end of it. I recall telling someone at my extremely.