Old Soul, New World.

I started nursing school in 2006. It was a dream. I got a call the day that classes started and was asked if I was still interested. I cried and laughed the whole way to school. I opened the door to the classroom to find a small class of fresh faced people and a very small instructor. This was my first group. It was harmonious. Unfortunately, with the lack of instructors we had our group break apart into other groups. Friendships flourished and some wilted. All in all, it was an experience. I was got really good marks in clinical when all that I was doing was learning how to survive. Some days I felt like I was on the top of the world. Other days I was underneath it. 

Nursing in itself is another world, and through these glimpses we call "clinical" all of us as students got our taste of it. This is when the line was drawn between those who felt that they could delve deeper into this world and there were some who did not want to go back. It's not surprising. 

Picture this: You walk onto a new unit. Your pockets are full of notebooks, pens, stethoscope, sheets of paper with things you have written on the night before to help you get by even though you will never look at it, and your medication cheat notes. You and your band of sisters (and at times brothers) are as pale as the fluorescent lights shining onto the sterilized unit. Your given two days buddied with a nurse who either thinks you are a complete idiot and ignores your existence or your a buddied with a nurse who thinks you are a complete idiot and over explains every little detail about anything. This is when you want to be on your own. Okay brain, its you and me. I will feed you with coffee and you will make me look good in front of everyone and not kill anyone. Okay?

Then there is the instructor: the people that make this look easy. Most of the time. They walk down the white hallways in their scrubs along with you. They have the power to make you or destroy you all in the same day. 

Then you find your zone, the area in which you can safely breakdown and build back up in seconds. I chose the clean storage place of any clinical I was in. It was safe, clean and the blanket warmer lived there. Plus the instructors never seemed to find me there. I was not hiding, just taking me time to talk with the linen.