July 25, 2010

First Nursing Job

My girlfriend Jenni just got a new nursing job at a nearby hospital . She’s of a non-traditional age to be starting a career–in her forties. Having worked for years as a copywriter , she decided she wanted to get out of the corporate world and into a career through which she could help people . She felt too isolated from the rest of the world during work hours , and would much rather be helping people than selling consumer goods and services she doesn’t care about. She’d considered majoring in pre-med in school , but had chosen a journalism major rather. Now she’s gone back and started fresh , in a sense, a couple decades later. I respect her courage to quit a career that she knows and has succeeded at to start something completely different . I’m not sure I’d have the gumption to go back to school now.

So to start things right, we’re throwing a party for Jenni. We’re going to decorate my condo as if for a graduation party. Jenni doesn’t know about it. I’m baking a big elaborate graduation cake for her, as well as designing a special diploma for her and getting it professionally printed. It’ll show that she has graduated to a new stage of life. We’ve also been collecting a whole lot of examples of ads and other copywriting she’s done and are going to burn them in the backyard. All of us put our money together and bought Jenni a few things from this store (their retail branch) and put them together as our own gift packet, including some Peaches scrubs and Jobst socks. We also bought her some prefatory nursing equipment–a stethescope, blood pressure cuff, reflex hammer, etc.

I hope Jenni absolutely loves nursing . I know she was miserable at the last firm . Knowing what a caring, motivated woman she is, I think a nursing career will be just perfect for her . I know that the next time I get hurt , I’d like to have her observation over me.