Graduation Came and Went, but It Turned Out Happy!

My last post was about how I was all sad at school ending. I had just finished my last final and instead of relief or happiness, I was feeling sad. Well, it's okay. Despite how difficult, frustrating, and down-right draining nursing school was, it was kind of my identity and a time of stressful excitement in my life for the past 3-4 years! The end of that is relieving, in some ways, but I've learned it's okay to be mildly sad at the ending because it's the end of a major life era.

Through nursing school/college I've:

• had countless highs and lows
• gained and lost friends
• was encouraged in my calling
• was told I would never get into the program, and then did get in!
• I went through many traumatic events, all in a 2 year time-span
• learned new things about myself
• lost pieces of what I htought was important about me, but gained new insights and strengths
• learned the basics of how to "be a nurse", according to textbooks
• had countless instructors, patients, friends, and family tell me that I was made to be a nurse
• I've cried and laughed with patients
• cuddled babies
• held the hands of people in the dying process
• celebrated "little" things with patients and families of patients
• been able to care for those who nobody else would touch
• and so much more

These things were my life. These things comprise a major part of my life and nursing school has consumed my every thought for at least 4 years! The end of such a monumental milestone is allowed to be a time of mixed emotions. Throw in the fact that I have friend and family troubles, I am recovering from PTSD, and shit is about to get real as far as my real life starting, and it's completely understandable why I was overwhelmed at a time where most people are supposedly happy.

I have talked with several of my friends, both nursing and non-nursing, that graduated with me on Friday, and they are having similar mixed feelings about graduation. Many of us are waking up in a panic because we feel we need to be in class, thought we are done now. Others are sad school is over because some of us are moving to other states and we may never see each other again, let alone every day!

Graduation is a happy time, but it's okay to be overwhelmed, sad, anxious, nervous, and a host of other emotions. Being able to feel all of these is part of what makes us human and helps us concrete these huge monuments in our memory bank.



I'll tell you a bit about how my graduation weekend went, though, just in case you were wondering...

Thursday: Pinning went well. My Mom pinned me, but Mema and Brother were able to go up on stage with me. It was a great ceremony and the Nurse's Pledge really got to me. As I was reading it with my classmates, and my family and friends listened to me promise my life for the career of a nurse, I was able to reflect and realize that nursing is my calling. The pledge sounded like it was written for me!

Friday: Graduation was wonderful! My mom's sister and her husband drove down with us. Then Brother and Dad met us at the event center. Everyone loved my cap, except my peds professor (who I've had serious problems with all semester and who mocked it in front of the other professors to my face!). I put RN but instead of "Registered Nurse" I wrote out "Redneck Nurse" and put it on camo back ground. I'm known as the class redneck and so many of my classmates and friends loved it! What's even better is that when my peds professor was mocking my cap, the other professors chimed in and told me how cute it was and how creative I was to come up with that. So, it made me feel a bit better. I got lots of pictures and had a grand ol' time during graduation. The nursing class was in the back of the graduate seating, and many of us were talking and laughing the whole time because getting through 1000+ students all graduating takes a long time! Many nursing students wore their stethoscopes as cords and I even graduated Cum Laude! I was so close to the next highest gpa, but graduating with honors at all was an accomplishment that I am very proud of.

Saturday: This was the day of my party. Many people RSVP'd, so I got food for about 50-60 people and rented a park. Unfortunately, only 3 of my friends, one of my uncles and his family came, and then two sets of family friends came. Well, my Mom, Dad, and Brother came too. It was cold and rainy, so my dad was surprised that anyone came at all, but the people that did come went out of their way to make sure that someone came to celebrate with me, so I was glad for that. I think I should have planned it for a different weekend, because so many people were having parties that day. However, it was disappointing, yet a good time to practice "spinning" the situation to find the silver lining. The spin is: the people that came are all so very dear to my heart, I was glad to be able to spend lots of time with each of them individually instead of being overwhelmed by the amount of people who showed up.

So, it was a good weekend. My favorite day was graduation. I got so many photos with friends. I shared a lot of smiles and hugs. The whole day fell into place and G-d worked out the whole weekend just the way it was supposed to be. I'm so very glad for that.



Ladies and gents, I would like to present to you... ME! I graduated counseling, nursing school, and I am beginning my adult life with a job right out of college. Life will not be easy by any means, though many days I wish it were. However, I know that sometimes the L-rd blesses others through the struggles I have and the L-rd blesses me through different events, both seemingly good and bad events. Life is a journey. It's hard, fund, and every changing. All we can do is hold on for the ride and pray that someday, our life makes a difference and we learn the lessons we are supposed to learn while here on this earth.

I'm approaching this next phase in my life with cautious optimism. I'm terrified, but I see the L-rd working every day. Most days are still a struggle, but I'm not bed-bound anymore. Even today, when it's cold and cloudy and I have nothing I really need to do, I pulled myself out of bed and got my butt to Starbucks. I'm making baby steps in my healing journey and graduating counseling is proving to be a struggle. However, I know that I can go back to counseling at any time, but it is meant to be a temporary crutch as opposed to a new life-long sentence/expense.

I graduated!

Now I'm: BedpanAlley, BSN!

I have to catch myself, I keep calling myself a nursing student instead of a newly graduated baby-nurse... I'll fix that in time. Maybe someday I'll begin to feel like a nurse, but the learning will never end. Good thing I love to learn, right?

Shiftin' Gears

I'm going to start with a confession. Several really, but the main one is that I like to shift really fast in my manual car when I am stressed. For some reason it helps me blow off some steam. I don't go fast enough that I get a "fast driving award" (my uncle's name for a speeding ticket), I just shift faster than all of the automatic cars next to me and I feel like a boss!

So, coming home from my parent's house yesterday, I was frustrated because I had been on the highway for about an hour in traffic, then I got stuck behind some joker who decided to go 10 mph under the speed limit and then just had to get off on MY exit. Yes, I know how selfish and irrational that is, but don't tell me you don't have them thoughts too! Anywho, we were then both turning left. Fortunately, there were two separate turning lanes. I get past them just to meet them again at another red light. L-rd, what are you doing to me? I'm just trying to get home so that I can change to get to church on time!!! As my blood started boiling at this silly red light, I crank up the tunes and get ready for green. When that green light came I was first through the intersection until some little blue car that looked like it was actually supposed to be able to go that fast passed me up. We were so far in front of anyone else that it didn't matter anymore and so I got up to speed and just kept driving as normal. Awhile later I needed into the lane they were in. I noticed that they slowed from their racing pace and the passenger was waving out of the moon roof. I figured they were waving at the car next to them, so I didn't think anything of it when they stuck their arm out the window and brought it back in about 4 times. When I got to my turn off, they slowed their car, got next to mine and rolled down the passenger window! Oh my gosh! I don't know what they were doing, but they were some cute guys and I'm hopin' they were surprised that it was a girl in a redneck lookin' SUV shiftin' as smooth and as quick as I was. I don't know about flirting in any capacity, but they way that guy was lookin' at me, I'm thinkin' he may have been flirt-waving at me... They may have also been waving at me because they beat me. I don't know.

Anyway, I am hoping it was the first reason because it made me feel pretty darn cool that my little car almost beat their actual racing car and then they realized that I'm a girl. I didn't wave back because I was so shocked, but I gave the guy riding shotgun a bit of a smile.

I can't believe I almost forgot to tell y'all that story!

Another confession is that it made me feel pretty good after my break up. This whole relationship has made me feel so unstable. I knew I have chronic depression, severe anxiety, and possibly some other psychological problems and I knew that that was something I would need to work on before I ever started anything with anyone, regardless of how well they knew me beforehand. Along with everything else that I ignored about a month and a half ago, I ignored that. So, when I was strapped into this roller-coaster with another human, I realized how nuts I actually am instead of being able to down-play it the way I normally do. Now that we've broken up, and even during our time "together," I was wondering if I would ever be able to have an actual relationship that leads to a marriage and the rest of my life spent with someone. I still don't know if that is possible, but I am still highly unnerved because I learned so much about myself and it's not good stuff. I never realized how selfish, unstable, weird, nerdy, selfish, quirky, difficult, selfish, lonely, independent, selfish, judgmental, hypocritical, selfish, and ridiculous I am. Yes, I threw selfish in there several times, but even that is a conservative estimate of how selfish I actually am. Those are also just the easy examples that come to mind right now, there is a laundry list of thousands of terrible personality traits I discovered about myself. It's been a rough month and a half. Good news, though, I was wondering if G-d had been telling me to get rid of my kissing policy, turns out He hasn't. So, I am so glad that I didn't do that in this relationship. He was just being quite to see what I would do... I don't like it when He does that...