Endings, Beginnings, and Giant Leaps of Faith

Twenty-five working days and twelve and a half weeks until I take a big leap of faith into my nursing life. At the end of August, I will quit my job and become a full-time nursing student. It will be the formal end to a twenty year career working in information technology. I will say goodbye to colleagues I have grown to respect and love. I’ve loved this career, and sometimes hated it. I am fortunate to have had the opportunity of an interesting and challenging job for so many years.

While it is an ending of a chapter of my life, it is a new beginning as well. I am excited to dedicate myself fully to the process of becoming a nurse. I look forward to clinicals, to begin finding out what it really means to be a nurse. I hope that that I have the right stuff. I worry that I don’t. The only way to find out, though, is to jump in with both feet. Step outside the comfort zone. Take the leap of Faith. Sometimes, I envy people who are getting in “clean”, straight out of school… no comfortable habits, no beloved colleagues, no established career or reputation, no baggage that must be abandoned. But then again, I wouldn’t give up the last twenty years for anything, so that’s foolish thinking. Keep the faith.

“Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown.” – Claude Bernard

Indeed.