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buybuydandavis comments on How I Ended Up Non-Ambitious - Less Wrong
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Thank you!
The reactions I get from people when I tell them I'm in nursing tend to be either very negative or very positive. The negative ones, most often from my parents' friends who knew me growing up, are "you're a smart girl, why would you want to do that?", at which point my usual defensive retort is, "So? Do you really want a dumb nurse looking after you?"
But an awful lot of people, probably more than 50%, start gushing about how much they respect me for it. As far as I can tell, being in a fancy hard degree like biomed will get you respect for brains, but studying nursing gets you points for character. People know that it's a hard job, not hard in the sense of "only a a few really bright or talented people can do it", but tough physically and emotionally. At work, I tell old ladies who come to aquafit classes that I'm in nursing, and they automatically think I'm a good person...
I'll give you credit for brains. Or at least for making a very good call.
You picked a profession where the knowledge you gain is directly useful to you and the people around you. My impression is that the work is steady, positions are available everywhere, the profession shown no signs of obsolescence, and as a nurse, you're not going to be replaced by someone younger who just came out of school learning the hot new thing that makes you obsolete.
If you say the job is really hard physically and emotionally, maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all. You'd know better than I do. Does everyone really know it's so demanding?
Maybe because you're a smart girl. Lots of people are busy chasing money and status - often the status of bossing other people around. A lot of people think that's what smart folks do. The smarts to make good choices for your life are the smarts worth having. I've been an ass about a lot of the choices I've made, or failed to make, and all the akrasia talk around here gives me the impression I'm not alone in this.