Today Christy takes her last final exam of nursing school (her final final?). Next week she’ll have her official pinning ceremony and graduation and next month she’ll sit for the NCLEX exam to earn her RN. It’s the culmination of five years of incredibly hard work: three years of basics and pre-reqs and two years of nursing classes and clinicals.
To say I’m proud of her would be a monumental understatement.
To be honest, while I always knew she could do it, it wasn’t always easy to watch. I vividly remember her medical terminology class and how much she struggled to pronounce even the most basic terms. The semester of remedial math and the multiple attempts at passing the required math entrance exam. Not to mention her crippling fear of writing that almost kept her from even attempting going back to school in the first place. But now she speaks fluent medical-speak, she’s better at math than I am, and her writing is great. I still can’t believe how much she’s grown and everything she’s accomplished in just the last few years.
Of course, it wasn’t just her hard work, it was all of ours. The girls and I had to work just as hard and had to sacrifice just as much as she did. We’ve had to go without a lot of things over the last five years, and there were many times I felt like a horrible parent for some of the stuff I was asking my kids to go without, like I was somehow robbing them of a big chunk of their childhood. But every time, they accepted it without question or complaint. They understood even when I didn’t. They stood by their mom, supported her, prayed for her, celebrated her victories, and accepted their temporary inconveniences. And they’ve been awesome through all of it.
It’s still not really the end, though. Though she’ll have her RN and already has an amazing job lined up, she has to go on and finish up her BSN, a process of probably two more years of full-time classes, which of course won’t be easy at all while working full-time and trying to be a mom to two active middle-schoolers. But she’s come this far already, and I’m confident she’ll make it the rest of the way.
I’m confident we’ll make it the rest of the way.
Previously:
Here we go again
One semester down
Labored days
Storm warning