A New Chapter

It’s been exactly 29 days since I finished taking the board exam. 29 days of bumming around. Sure, I found the first week enjoyable, spending time with my friends, shopping, watching movies, reading, and writing: things I have not indulged myself too much on for the past 2 months preparing for the exams.

Then the second week came and I got bored out of my mind at home.

Sure, it was tolerable but well, really, you can only do so much: watching TV, house chores, eating, playing diablo3 in the wee hours of the night. Sure I was perfectly content with being curled up in bed all day, reading. But my hand was itching to write.

And the home environment wasn’t very productive for me at all. I found myself staring at a blank page for hours at a time. It was terribly, terribly frustrating.

That’s when a friend of mine asked if I wanted to get a job. Well… in all actuality, my mom didn’t want me to work yet and I thought, before the board results came out, I would bum around and just read and write at home, maybe even volunteer at the local health centre. But like I said, I wasn’t very productive.

So I agreed.

I sent my resume to a company my friend recommended. I got scheduled for an interview the next day. I asked my cousin to come with me, considering she, too, was looking for a job. I opted to keep in mind that if I get hired, it would be temporary: until my board exam results come out and I get my license. 

Although I wasn’t taking job hunting seriously yet, it got me thinking of my not so distant future as I sat waiting to be interviewed  for the fourth time by the fourth company. It made me realize that looking for a job isn't easy, especially if you’re inexperienced.

It got me thinking about the board exam: What if I didn’t pass? I’d have to take it all over again. Too much time will go to waste. But then again, if I did pass, would I get a job? There’s a reason there’s an increasing decrease in nursing students for the past few years. There are too many nurses in the country with nowhere 

to work.

I started thinking, what if I didn’t take practicality into consideration when choosing my course and studied mass communications or English lit instead? Where would I be right now?

But then, I thought, I’m already here: a nursing graduate. There’s no use for regrets. Besides, I want to practice my profession. I want to be a psychiatric nurse. I want to be a forensic nurse. I want to work as a writer in a magazine. I want to write and publish a novel someday. I want to own a café, a restaurant, a bar, an establishment. There are a lot more things I want to make of myself.

But how do I get from point A to point B? To point C? To point D? To point E?

So now, I’m rambling.

But my point is this: I’m scared.

There are too many questions I don’t know the answer to. There are too many changes, too many fears. But 

I’m never gonna know until I get there, will I?

So I’ll be gritting my teeth and go where the wind takes me.

I’ll keep dreaming. I’ll work my way through it. I’ll get to where I want to be, where I should be.

I know I will.

But until then and right now,

It’s still a new chapter of my life: Uncharted Territory.

Damn right, that’s what it is.

Taking the Boards

*Note: Another late post, written on the 3rd of July, 2012

Two weeks after graduation marked the start of our review for the board exam. For the first month, we spent everyday cramming 4 years’ worth of lectures into our heads. The second month of our review involved undergoing house arrest with 20 of my friends and 3 of our mentors. Each day consisted of at least 3 practice exams per day with rationalization.

It was two months’ worth of an everyday of complete mental exhaustion.

But it had been worth every second.

House arrest had been quite an enlightening experience. Not counting in the mental exhaustion, living in a house with 22 other people with only one bathroom was already a challenge all on its own. It had been the first time I lived away from my family for that span of time. I missed my own bed, my own bathroom, I missed my own room, I missed my laptop, I missed my books, I missed our house, I missed my family.

But every day in that house proved to be interesting. Everyday had been a laughable chaos. It was the Hunger Games: It was a fight for your own bathroom time before all the water runs out; it had been a fight for the best partition of food and it was a race for the best sleeping arrangements. But then again, not a day would go by without laughter. Every other moment was hilarious and unpredictable. There are the midnight food trips, the late night conversations and even the occasional trips to the night market. On certain days, we’d even go out to the parks, dine out, see the sights and stuff just to alleviate the stress.

It had been fun. It was enough to make me forget about the constant strain of the board exams on my sanity.

On June 30, 2012, I entered the campus on which I would take my board exam. It had been nerve wracking and difficult. I had three exams that day. I couldn’t get myself to eat anything that morning, just a few bites of chocolate and water. At the end of the day, it was only then that I realized that I was starving. The next day hadn't been any better. It was still as nerve wracking as the first. It was difficult. But the moment I passed that last piece of paper and strode out that room, I wanted nothing more to scream.

It was like a huge weight was removed from my chest and I could laugh heartily to my heart’s content.

Finally.

But then, I realized...

Now, I have two months to wait for the actual result.

Oh. Fuck.

Just Grateful

*Note: This is a late post, written on the 18th of April, 2012.

On the afternoon of April 15, 2012, I made my way up the stage in the brightly lit exhibit hall of a building a little ways away from our college, and received a rolled up paper signifying that I have finished my four year course of Nursing and a pin representing my nursing school. I couldn’t wipe the grin from my face as I marched back into my seat in the room full of people.

Finally.

I did it.

I am now a Nursing Graduate.

I am one of the 700+ students to graduate that day, in that room.

I’m so freakin’ proud of myself!

I bounced on my seat, grinning from ear to ear as I surveyed the sea of faces. I was seated practically right smack in the middle of the hall and everywhere were student joyously celebrating in their seats, unable to wait for this ceremony to end.

My college life had not been smooth sailing all throughout. Our school hadn’t been perfect. It was just a small campus, housing too many students. The administration doesn’t seem to be handling their jobs well, the system is always fucked up; always delayed, always disorganized and the school’s staff can be very unhelpful, making things a lot more frustrating especially during enrolment. Student complaints are unheard of and when you have some problems with your schedule or maybe you need some documents to take care of, students are only given satisfactory service if and only if you have your parents with you. It’s an anomaly, really, of the school’s system. With your parents, you’re serviced promptly; face them alone and be prepared to come back for three days just to process you request.

The professors are pretty much alright. But of course, every campus have terror teachers; those professors whose class you just want to skip, those professors whose paths you don’t want to cross, those professors whose heads you just wanna rip off. But they’re just the usual student hazard. There are even those professors that, throughout the four years, stick with you and become the mentors you least expected but are lucky to have.

There’s also the full load of classes.

The endless, piled up school work.

The stress of clinical duties.

The annoyingly irate patients.

The sleepless nights.

The exhausting days.

Family.

Friends.

Love.

Literature.

The pleasures of being a teenager.

God.

Though not in particular order, you have all these to keep in mind; to keep in careful balance.

But even with all these, I found myself in the midst of great friends, supportive parents and an everyday of blissful teenage shenanigans.

I was happy.

It made me nostalgic, thinking about what I’m leaving behind and moving on to bigger and better things. I’ve made it through college. In two months’ time, I’d be taking the Nursing Licensure Exam, and then pretty soon I’d be looking for a job.

Welcome to Reality.

But then again, I wouldn’t have made it this far without all of them.

To God, who kept me guided through all the rough patches and blessed me with the people that made everything worthwhile.

To my parents, who gave me all the love, guidance and support a daughter could ever ask for.

To my mentors, who imparted a great deal of wisdom.

To my crazy friends, who stood by me through thick and thin.

To the boy who made me fall in love, who made my everyday brighter.

To literature and writing, that kept me sane through all the madness.

It is my heartfelt gratitude to have all of you in my life.

Like I said, college hadn’t been easy. It had held so many memorable experiences, so many happy times, so many tears shed, so much laughter shared, so may stupid things done, so many mistakes made, so many lessons learned…

Too many things to be thankful for.

A Fresh Start

“This is a secret.... Can you keep it?”

These words mark the end of a blog post made by a very close friend of mine. Her approach to writing was an unscrupulous narrative.

It was honesty at its finest. 

It made me aware, once again, of the brevity of blogging; placing your own words, your own thoughts, your own experiences where it is vulnerable under the scrutinizing eyes of other people. Sure, your identity remains a secret if you wish it so but your innermost soul is laid out for everyone to see. It is easier to judge people you do not know than the ones that you do know. That’s one of the “hazards” of being a blogger. With only the words we choose to share, people can judge our opinions harshly. Some of you may be shaking your heads in disagreement, some may agree, some may just not give a damn. Some might not even know what the eff I’m talking about. Hell, some of you might have even closed down my site saying this is full of shit.

And that, my friends, is exactly what I mean. 

Maybe from the beginning of this post, you’ve already decided that I’m a crappy writer who doesn’t have a life. If I’m lucky enough, maybe you’d think of me as a superhuman martyr who’s trying to make the world a better place all by me onesies. 

But whatever you decide, it doesn’t necessarily make it true.

There is always more than meets the eye.

I have strayed away from the point of this blog post, it seems.

So let me jump right back to it.

For a while, my writing had been purely fiction with only touches of real life scenarios. I turned to fiction in darker moments of my reality as I found solace in these made-up realms. But here I am, once again, writing down my thoughts, though it may be a little rough around the edges. This endeavour to recreate my experiences and thoughts with words had been fuelled by the honesty of that blog post.

For giving me a boost, to be brave enough to write about myself again…

Thank you. (You know full well who you are.J)