“This is really happening!” is what I thought to myself in an epiphany as I sat through 4 hours of “Powerchart” training on Tuesday (charting software in the hospital). It was just one of those moments when the reality of all the skills and labs that have begun to be furniture in my confined live quarters of the last two months, begin to take shape in a much larger context. I don’t know what it was about that moment, learning to enter data that one day soon I will be collecting and entering into Powerchart, that brought about the clarity. It may have been the actually being in the hospital, actually having a clue about what the various not long ago foreign words and acronyms meant. But there is was the reality that I actually am going to be a nurse.

Then it happened today again at “Research Day” . . . which in many ways I scorn, because I am a feeler, not a knower . . . I think most of life is on a need to know basis (a google expert!). I am most interested in learning things that pertain to what is meaningful and important to me in the here and now. So I was kind of dreading listening to a whole bunch of academic theories being spread around, but today I did get a glimpse into why the theory of nursing might be a little bit different and more appealing to me . . .because evidence based practice is just that . . . the theories actually have a shot at becoming practice. So despite myself, I must admit sitting in that room full of nursing students and faculty I felt a little bit of pride for my new profession. Internally there was an acknowledgement that although I do not believe I fit fully yet and I feel very infantile, that one day I will share the deep heritage and history and unwritten rules of these people and that really they do not appear to be too bad.

Another positive note this week was the physical assessment test, I aced it and I felt so proud and was really affirmed by the testing instructor. I don’t know if it’s merely the fact that this experience starves us of affirmation, but it felt so good to be celebrated for a job well done. I was told that I was going to be a good nurse (something admittedly I believe about myself, but it’s hard to keep believing as I am surviving GEP). It was encouraging to hear: “if you kept on doing just what you had done and that through doing it you would learn many things that would make you an even better nurse”.

Overall, this week has been a mile marker for me. It closes off eight intense weeks of steep learning curves and feeling completely inadequate, never-mind physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted. I am walking away with a slightly clearer identity as a nurse and a little bit of a thrill to walk into the hospital next week and meet my next terrifying experience head on with the hopes that I will indeed make a great nurse and a great future midwife.