In a weekend where for many it was graduation week, or Mother's Day weekend, this week was national nurses week! Ending on May 12, Florence Nightngale's birthday. A good way to celebrate all the good that nurses do for people around the world! MJ is on her way to becoming a nursing school student and will be really good at it! I appreciate that certain highly-regarded and necessary professions (nurses are ranked as the No.1 trusted profession according to Freakonomics radio) have weeks that are dedicated to them! I would advocate for a National Lawyers week, except there is already a "Be Kind to Lawyers Day," which is fine, except I think lawyers are thick-skinned enough that you don't really need to be nice to them.
But as part of nursing week, I went to NYU's nursing school admitted students day in lieu of MJ! Really kind of a fun prospect for me, I felt like I was back in high school visiting college again or even visiting a law school, and imagined myself making that decision to go to another school. I remember that everything seemed so fresh, so much hope behind every door and each current student of the program who gave inspiring and reassuring messages about how renowned the program is and that their school helps produce jobs. Of course, then I had to actually go school law school and the 3 years part was kind of a drag, but that doesn't change the fact that admitted students day has a nice feeling to it.
When I walked in, I was a little stunned that I was the only man who was there. A group of female faces looked back at me, and I got that familiar feeling of dread walking into a room of strangers who were judging me, evaluating who I was, and I felt I was sticking out like a sore thumb. I expected that nursing is a heavily female-dominated profession, but my friend's a nurse, and there must be SOME male nurses, right? Luckily a few dudes showed up later to ease my discomfort, and the session didn't start off with any embarrassing self-intro, and it soon launched into a fact session about nursing, a lot of which I didn't know about! There are nursing shortages around the country, but less so in large urban areas like New York and California, unfortunately, the 2 places that MJ and I would really like to end up eventually. Nursing school is pretty rigorous, with a lot of classes that students need to take at the same time as going into clinics and practice sessions where they learn how to take a pulse, do a blood test, etc., with hands-on applications and live dummies that serve as the test dolls. I've looked at the material MJ had to learn just for the pre-requisities of nursing school and it's no joke! Lots of review of chemistry and biology, and then some new topics like microbiology and physiology. MJ's really good at studying so she got A's in all of those classes, but I wonder if I could have.......I may be too corrupted by the digital age and distracting online information that I'd have a hard time concentrating, but MJ can really buckle down and study! I admire her efforts, and her persistence will probably help her as a nurse, where 12-hour work sessions are not uncommon.
I've had some pretty good experiences with nurses, but one.......not so good experience. Most of them have been going to blood drives and dealing with whichever nurse was pricking the nurse that day. Some are funny, some are nice, some try to engage in conversation, some just go about their business, so everyone has their own style, but my last blood donation was a newbie-looking guy who definitely acted like it by pricking my arm in the wrong spot and moving around the needle to find the right vein to collect the blood.........while the needle was still in my arm. It didn't feel like I was dying necessarily, but definitely a lot of concentrated pain in that area that seemed unnecessary. I guess that's what nurses do, try to avoid that unnecessary pain. MJ will be good at it, I probably wouldn't be at least in drawing blood because I don't handle needles and precision very well. I did not fare well in junior high home economics class with sewing or cooking or almost any aspect of the class (and got my only C of my life as it was a performance-based class).
Anyway, there seem to be a lot more to nursing that I had once believed, which I thought was just helping doctors at a hospital and do the stuff that doctors don't do. There are so many different types of nurses with different certifications like oncology nurse, ICU nurse (intensive care unit) nurse, nurse practitioner, family nurse practitioner (the one MJ's leanin towards now), pediatric nurse, school nurse, emergency room nurse, etc. Name a medical situation and there's probably a specific type of nurse for it, kind of like lawyers.......except lawyers make enemies of other people and other lawyers, whereas nurses are all battling the same enemy: disease and illness. So it's something that MJ can be proud of, and I can be proud of her. Towards the end of NYU's admitted students day, I even started to think about becoming a nurse and they were presenting a pretty good case for why I should join the nursing school too........so who knows, maybe when this whole lawyer thing stops working out.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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