Success!

I read an interesting article in the newspaper about the types of people who succeed and are genuine game-changers. If you look at your graduating class, if you separated them into groups based purely on academic success, you would find that the straight-A students may not end up being the most successful in life, in their career and making the biggest impact on the world. That's because they are adept at giving their teacher's what they wanted, and are conformists, and maybe not innovators. That's a major generalization, but succeeding at school by the metric of grades, does not involve the exact skill-set and aptitudes needed for success in a career.

I was academically gifted with a major preoccupation with grades throughout grade school, highschool, university, and college. Some things came easily for me, but I also put a huge effort into my schoolwork to elevate my performance from an A to an A+, getting those elusive five marks that meant too much to me. My first time dealing with failure was when I tried to take calculus at seventeen, after missing the first part of the course, and much slowed down mentally following a hospitalization with depression. Even with one on one tutoring that my mother faithfully drove me forty plus kilometres to attend, I never really got it, and my teacher allowed me to audit the course. I later took correspondence courses to finish up high school and finished History and Family Studies, and nearly completed Chemistry, but didn't get that far with Finite math. After a year of working, I started university with less than a full course load with support from the Dean. My high school grades made me eligible for a significant scholarship, though I didn't end up with the most lucrative one I was shooting for. I soon found that first year courses at university were quite manageable and something I could excell in. My academic career as an English honours and Religion double-major was very focused, and the only thing more satisfying than completing a ten-page paper, was getting it back with high praise and an excellent mark. Though A +'s were more rare than in highschool I could usually count on an A-.

I completed my degree with double honours, and while I'd like to think all that effort didn't go to waste, I did find it hard to transfer my success at analyzing literature and writing stellar papers on topics like Covenant theology and the Church Father's view of the Sacraments, into an actual bonafide career. After a few years of working, I figured graduate school in Biblical studies with the goal of being a professor was a noble and achievable goal. Though accepted to the one school I applied to, I decided against pursuing it, after a crisis in my mental health caused me to have to defer my studies and I realized there were a lot of PhD's out there who don't end up as professors, even if that is their goal. After more time working a job I would have been qualified for straight out of high school, I decided to go back to school and become a nurse. The accelerated nursing program at McMaster would get me there in two years after I completed some prerequisites. So I started correspondences course yet again in Human Anatomy and Physiology, Chemistry, and Sociology, while working my general labour seasonal job.

The most fun I had as a correspondence student, though I also found it somewhat stressful, was when I was mailed a chemistry set with every thing needed to perform a dozen or so experiments in my kitchen. Labs were never the finest part of  science courses I took in high school. I remember having a difficult time starting the Bunsen burner, and relying on my lab partner to do most of the dissecting on the fetal pig, which took away much of my appetite for lunch. Lab reports were usually okay, but not my favourite things to write. I'd rather write a test or exam. So maybe it is only in retrospect that I have such a fondness for that Chemistry set. All those chemical reactions and precise measurements, test tubes and beakers. I was close to finishing my second Chemisty course, when I got the news that I hadn't made it into the Accelerated Nursing program, and I once again dropped Chemistry since I still needed the lab component, which had to be done at McMaster and cost $500, and I wouldn't need the course for Plan B which was a college program in Practical Nursing.

Entering the Practical Nursing Program a decade after I had started out as a twenty-year-old university student, I was a mature student among many mature students of varying ages and a few who were fresh out of high school. Once again academic achievement was my strong point, though college took some time to adjust to. My style of hand-outs after fourth year university seminars in English literature and theory, wasn't appreciated by the peers who worked on our first group project on Sleep. Group projects weren't my favourite way of earning a grade, because I liked to control the end product too much, and that first group project was one of the most conflict-ridden I have ever been involved in. Thankfully I did well with the multiple choice tests, which could be somewhat tricky at times. The practical hands-on part and the placements at hospitals and long-term-care homes were more of a stretch. Though I went through a rough semester when I had to pull out of school for several weeks, and limit my stimulation during that time, I completed the program with honours every semester but that one.

But excelling at multiple choice tests does not a successful nurse make, though they may both require critical thinking skills. I am convinced that I would be a very successful life-long student, but my confidence level as I attempted to expand my skill-set as a home care nurse and casual worker at a Retirement home was rather low. I landed an assignment that had ideal hours, but didn't demand much of me as a nurse professionally. Later I would describe myself as being under-employed as I did various assignments of three or four hours at a time, including a whole school year at a kindergarten classroom. I decided to get into foot care nursing, which I enjoyed, but it was never close to full-time and didn't pay well. Stepping away from the nursing field, after a prolonged illness, I wasn't sure if I'd ever go back to it. Now I am working part-time as an RPN on the night shift in a retirement home. Though some nights can be eventful and stressful, there are others that are extremely routine with only one or two call-bells all night and the regular medications to give in the early morning. Working by myself while most of the residents are asleep, can be quite peaceful. Getting paid a nursing wage while also doing tasks like laundry and preparing the dining room for breakfast, just so a nurse is there if the residents need one during the night, is one of the lower stress nursing jobs, and a reason to do such mundane tasks with excellence.

As a university graduate, struggling towards a meaningful, successful career, a college graduate and Registered Practical Nurse, attempting to be an excellent nurse with a full-time, professionally challenging career, I have lived the truth that a top student isn't always the most professionally successful. Some of that is what I chose to study in university, and some of that may be related to my mental health challenges, and maybe a part has been the times I have given up on a particular dream like grad school. A lot of success in a career is related to your attitude and your level of confidence and willingness to try new things and to innovate.  As a nurse, I can be a professional in the health care field, with marketable hands-on skills, and I can potentially get into many types of nursing with training and job experience, but I am limited by my level of confidence and my anxiety about failure.

But maybe measurements of success cannot be as precisively tabulated as the compounds in a chemistry experiment. Maybe success in life needn't involve a high-powered and earth shattering career, just as the grades achieved in school needn't define you as a life-long learner. Maybe cutting plants in a nursery or folding laundry in the wee hours of the night, could be done with excellence and pride. Maybe overcoming obstacles  and working through failures, allowing these challenges to shape you into a more compassionate and genuine, if genuinely flawed, human being, is a path to a type of success that is rarely measured in grades or performance appraisals. I'd like to think that what I've learned through my many years of school and life, has not be wasted and that I've learned a degree of wisdom to go with my liberal arts degree and college diploma. In the end, to be a person of character, who genuinely loves, and cares for others, is a more important goal for my life, than to be professionally successful in a career.

Written 05/07/17