I am stressed out, and it is really starting to chip away at my sanity. It washes over my body in buzzing waves. There is no respite or days off from my stress. It is ever present and tenacious.

Top Five Reasons for my stress:

5. Crazy sleep schedule.

I love changing shifts. One of the reasons I was attracted to nursing was the ability to work at all different times of day. This would help relieve the boredom of working the same hours all the time. However, there are limits to my ability to handle rapid shifts in my sleeping patterns. I worked a day shift on Friday, a night shift Saturday, followed by an early morning class Monday, and now back to night shifts. My body feels beaten up and exhausted through and through.

4. Looming move to Victoria

I made a promise to myself that I would not attempt any plans to move to Victoria until December 9th when I am finished school. However, I can’t stop the back of my mind from ruminating on it at a thousand miles per hour. Where will I work? Where will I live? How will I get my belongings there? Will Richard get a job right away? This move will be a hell of a lot of work, and I just can’t push it out of my mind.

3. Graduation

It is not necessarily the graduation that is stressing me out, but what I will be doing the day following graduation. Yesterday I was offered five jobs in my Health Region, all of which are very attractive.

However, aside from choosing a placement, the biggest stress is whether or not I should apply for the prestigious internship in the ICU. It is a six-month program that would give me the skills, experience, and theoretical knowledge to work in an ICU. It is the opportunity of a lifetime. Unfortunately, Richard was saddened by my desire to apply because it would delay our move to Victoria. However, this is an opportunity to take a career direction I have been dreaming of for years, so he says he would support my decision if I wanted to apply.

I decided not apply. It was a very difficult decision, but I want to move to Victoria as much as Richard does. Bigger than that was the thought that I would be moving anyway after the six months of training. This is not fair to the people that would be investing hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars training me. I just wouldn’t be able to deal with the guilt of up and leaving. The opportunity should go to someone who wants to stay here.

On a side note, this does not mean that I can’t go to the ICU later on in my career. I believe it will be good to have some med/surg nursing under my belt before jumping into the most advanced form of acute nursing.

So, I am still left with the stressful decision of where I will go following graduation. I believe I am going to choose my undergraduate unit, which I hated, but will offer me priceless experience. Bear with me while I traumatize myself by submitting myself to this unit.

2. Too Much To Do, Too Little Time

This one is self-explanatory. I have papers, clinicals, case studies, readings, presentations, and more. All the work is piling up and I can’t seem to fathom how I will finish everything.

1. Intangible

Perhaps it is just a combination of all of the above, but it feels as though my immediate future is uncertain, confusing, and full of uncertain change. I am probably facing a year of mental, emotional, financial, and career instability. I am typically the type of person that enjoys chaos and change. But I, like everyone, has a limit.

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On an exciting note, I received my papers today to apply for my temporary RN license and Canadian Registered Nurse Exam. It was the oddest feeling to be looking at those papers, realizing that my student nurse career is ending. There were times that I really didn’t think I would make it!

I guess there’s still the possibility of not making it! ACK! I better go back to writing dozens of entries in my annotated bibliography!