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