Black&White

A few years ago I started a secret nursing notebook. It is a collection of thoughts, articles and advice from Medical journals, professors in the nursing department, and nurses I've met along the way. So far, it's only a couple pages long and and consists of little snippets that most people would consider gibberish, but for me it jogs a memory of a lecture or a conversation that felt significant about my future profession. Here are a few excerpts;
-Being confident about what you are doing is half the battle.
- Learn how to manage your feelings, find your outlet...what works for you when you leave the hospital, if you don't you'll burn out and you'll be selling real estate in 5 years.
-Our country is moving towards evidence based care, know your journals know your articles, be willing to change as medicine advances.
-If they ask you to wear purple bows in your hair than...Wear your purple fuckin' bows" (in regards to nursing school)
work on increasing your influence with your co-workers and the doctors, have tools to "handle" the men in charge, this will ensure your patient is getting the very best care.

Anyway, the list goes on. I found my notebook tonight as I was cleaning up for Matt and Amber to visit. I got excited to start nursing school so I can add to it.

I love Medicine. The practice of it, that is. Normally, I am a very analytical thinker, I like to get into the nook and cranny of every thought and every emotion. So much so that I see truth and life -advice in the silly little snippets from my notebook. In other words I read to much into things, there are always layers in my thought process.

But there are two aspects of my life that are devoid of this obnoxious habit. One, being when I study science. Which, when I first began my studies of the human body it used to drive me crazy in how linear and black and white the information was. Here is a body of facts and you have to know every single one of them. Period. Rarely, in any of my lectures would someone raise their hands and ask the daunting question, "Why?" And if they did the professor would give the age- old 'raised eyebrow annoyed look' and sigh say something to the effect of, "Please don't waste my time with your irrelevant question." Why?, would be an acceptable question in an English course or a pursuit of philosophy or religion. But not as vital when studying, say, the human skeletal system or the Krebs's cycle.

The other pursuit in my life that quiets that madness in my head and my heart, surprisingly, is ballet. When I am doing the barre exercises in a ballet class I think of nothing but the task at hand: ballet.

I have come to hold these two things very near and dear to my heart. Medicine and ballet. They would seem, to the naked eye, unrelated, but to me they provide a much needed break from all the layers.