Fun Monday # 75 Day dream to reality!
Irish Coffeehouse tells us that she had so many different ideas for FM's theme that she really had a hard time narrowing it down. She finally settled on one that she thought is easy and daydreamy fun for everyone:
Careers- Then and Now
THEN: As a child day dreaming of what your future would hold for you, what did you want to be when you grew up? Did you ever pursue or achieve it?
NOW: If you could be trained and placed in any career beginning tomorrow, what would it be?
So to my childhood dream.......
This is actually pretty easy for me because as a child there was only ever one vocation for me. I can't think what made me so determined to persue a career that was long unsocial hours (including nights), poor pay, unflattering uniform and rarely a weekend off. I expect you have guessed by now I wanted to be a nurse... I wonder if it was because I watched the very first fictional hospital series called Emergency ward 10 which started in 1957 when I was 13yrs old. Around the age of 14, I joined the British Red Cross, we met every week at the cottage hospital for training and we even entered competitions. The type of thing we had to do was assess a situation (like a car accident) and deal with it. I really enjoyed doing this but I lived a country village and after a couple of years the numbers attending the Red Cross meetings dwindled and the people running it gave up. I can remember being so upset.
However, fast forward another couple of years, during which time my father had a serious motor bike accident. You can imagine visiting him in hospital, every week, for months on end gave me a really good insight into the job (or so I thought!) and I was still determined to become a nurse.
OK I may also have dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer after reading 'A dream of Sadler Wells' or working with horses after reading 'A stable for Jill' (I still have both these books) and I do recall I once threatened to become a hairdresser when my father failed to support me going to London to complete my nurses training. It was around that time Dr Kildare came to our TV screens and at 17 nursing seemed very glamorous!
In the end, when I realised my father was not going to help me get to London, I made an application to a Bristol Hospital and did not even tell my parents until I got the interview......and the rest as they say is history...... and I became a nurse.
The training was much harder than I anticipated, some of the sisters were b*t***s and Matrons really ruled back in those days. Where were all the handsome doctors....none looked like Richard Chamberlain aka Dr Kildare!!
You didn't argue and you had no human rights and there was little compassion for the staff.....I remember the ward sister would not change my day off to go to my grandmother's funeral, just because it was a Saturday and the rotas had been done. I was 19 and very upset and in the end one of the other nurses agree to swap shifts so I was able to go. Imagine if that happened in this day and age!
In hindsight I think my nurses training made me quite strong and independent and it helped me get through some very tough periods later in life...but that's another story!
This picture
is one I posted as part of the second Fun Monday post way back in January 2007, when the topic was pictures from our childhood!
Now if I was younger and could train for a whole new career......I might just consider teaching because at one point I very nearly went down that route!
Now I'm sure you are going to find many interesting careers waiting for you over at
Irish Coffeehouse.
Archives:
2007: Beautiful Painting
is one I posted as part of the second Fun Monday post way back in January 2007, when the topic was pictures from our childhood!
Now if I was younger and could train for a whole new career......I might just consider teaching because at one point I very nearly went down that route!
Now I'm sure you are going to find many interesting careers waiting for you over at
Irish Coffeehouse.
Archives:
2007: Beautiful Painting
Labels: day dreaming, Fun Monday
33 Comments:
Teaching eh? Not what I was expecting.
Oh Chris, that´s such a nice story about you. I like it and enjoyed to read! A good topic for a Fun Monday!
You sound like you were one determined young lady. Thank goodness. I'll bet you are/were an excellent nurse!
I think it's great that people set out with a dream and achieve it...regardless of the odds and unhelpful parents!
What an enjoyable read! To have had a dream and realized it is so worth it, isn't it?!!
Teaching?! Now that's a hazardous occupation. [I'm trying to be funny on that comment, but when you consider what is happening in schools now-a-days, I guess it isn't anymore.]
Fabulous Fun Monday Chris! Mine's posted. Drop by, won't you?
What a great picture and story, how brave of you to follow what you were determined to do despite obstacles in your path :)
My mum's a nurse (trained in the 70's but went back after she had kids) and was a ward sister but is now a staff nurse and likes it much more - less paperwork as a staff nurse!
I admire nurses. I can not deal with bodily fluids unless they are my own. Now, teaching? I am right there with you! Happy Monday!
My grandma was a nurse, my mother is a nurse....I broke family tradition by not becoming one. Love the picture!
I think nurses are the most amazing people. I've been so well treated and taken care of by them the past 4 years. Both here, NZ and in Portugal. I'm sure you were a great nurse Chris.
I enjoyed learning more about you today. I watched the same shows, but had no desire to pursue nursing. I did, however, become a teacher ... retiring after 34 years in the classroom. For some reason, Blogger won't let me log on to my sites ... nor access my Google/Blogger identity here, so I've logged in with Name/URL and am hoping for the best. I feel 'out of sorts' and isolated somehow with this turn of events ... especially on Fun Monday, but I'll visit and comment as I can ... if I can.
Hugs and blessings,
Hmmm ... looks like it won't let me leave a clickable link either. One more experiment ...
Hugs and blessings,
storyteller
How cool! There are very few people I know who went after their dream! I think it's awesome you did even with the adversity you faced at home!
So interesting. . .teaching was my route until motherhood. You would be excellent! Great picture!
ChrisB, talk about a young woman with focus! And how smart of you to get that early on the job training with the Red Cross to test your interest. I'm left wondering if the Red Cross on this side of the pond has these career exploration programs for young people. I've always heard that nurses' training could be akin to entering a nunnery for what you had to put up with. Good for you for sticking it out.
I nearly went into nursing, but all the nurses in our family worked hard to talk me out of it! (I'm still not quite sure why!)
Nursing is a hard and honorable profession. Thank you for taking up that challenge.
I loved your Fun Monday!!
I wonder how evan back than they could be that heartless!! Thank goodness others cared!!
I admire your career choice. Enjoyed your post!
My Mom was a nurse, and was disappointed when I did not show interest in nursing (like iPost, I'm squeamish about bodily fluids, ewww...)
I do however, have great admiration for those in this often thankless profession.
Love the nursing picture. What a great story! I'm so glad you got to follow your dream, after all.
great post Chris. your story is very similar to my mom's, although she did train in London and after her training she came over her with a girlfriend to work for a year....but during that year she met my dad and the rest is history!! thanks for sharing your story!
So great that you got your dream although the training sounds HARD. I bet you were great at it.
What a great post and how nice that your other aspiration surprised your child.
I always love doing that!
Nurses are incredible people ... but I could never do it, I would be devasted if I lost someone and would probably never get over it. I can give blood, but don't do so well when its "on" other people.
another thought - I could come to the UK and we could teach together!
I have something for you...come over and see!!
bereavement leave isn't much better today than it was back then.
Amazed about that old beoooooootch.
Chris,
I enjoyed reading this post about the pathway to your nursing career. My sister was a nurse too; her student nurse uniform looked much like yours. She eventually became a teacher too. As she taught nursing at the college level. She is retired now too.
I just took a peek at your second Fun Monday. I loved seeing your pictorial history.
Love your post. :) I still want to be a teacher when I grow up.
I can only admire the dedication you showed in pursuing your chosen career Chris, the career itself... not so much, a very demanding one.
There was a romance novelist named Betty Neels. British, but her novels were also published by Harlequin. She wrote over 100 novels, alternating between only two plots. She herself had been a nurse, so nearly all of her heroines were nurses. Nearly all of the books involve the nurse (who is either a mousy-haired girl whose plain face is redeemed by a pair of thickly fringed hazel eyes, or a tall girl with flame-red hair and a "magnificent bosom") making a marriage of convenience with a handsome, wealthy, sometimes titled Dutch medical consultant.
nice story, I enjoyed reading it, I wanted to be a nurse at one point in my adult life, then I went to be a combat medic and perished the vision of being a nurse
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