The term is ending. Finals are next week and after the last class this week, there was an impromptu game of soccer with my classmates. These kids (I am really now old enough to be their mother at a respectable age – no teenage motherhood necessary anymore) are my friends and they keep me young at heart. I’m so lucky to be able to go to school a second time and really, really enjoy it this time. I loved my time at MIT and I grew up so much there. There, in the heart of Cambridge, I was stridently ambitious. But there was always this underlying nervousness and anxiety about what I was going to do with my life and if I was going to fulfill whatever promise I thought I had.
This time around, 20 years later, there is none of that anxiety, none of that nervousness. I just am who I am, I’m not trying to prove anything. I try and take pleasure in learning all the new material and meeting new people. I’m going to love being a nurse, I think it’s the right mix of hands-on work, science/medicine/chemistry and investing of emotional energy. If my classmates are any indication, I’m going to really enjoy being with my colleagues. I still don’t know what I’m going to do with my life and I still wonder if I’m going to fulfill whatever promise I think I have, but it all seems so much less important these days.
My colleagues and friends at work these days are a bunch of kids like yours. And I am much older than you are. Proudly, I still be able to keep-up with them mentally and physically. But, how long? No one really knows? Not me, not any body. Have fun.
Enjoy being a nurse is very good, seeing and meeting different kinds of people as well as with additional skills at hands. Adding any addition profession is always a big plus in life. Got to see the world in different angles.
With respect to growth wealth and one's financial security in the future, probably there are other means and ways are much more fruitful.
Anyway, both directions are not contradictory to each other. As a matter of fact, planning and executing them in parallel probably is the way to go.