Hanging On

I will officially start my 3rd year, second semester tomorrow and with all honesty I'm not quite ready or prepared yet. It feels like the 3 weeks off I had from school wasn't enough to make up from all those sleepless nights and tiring duty days I had last semester. I am not fully recharged yet. I don't think my mind is even capable of memorizing checklists and listening to hours and hours and HOURS of lecture. Anyway, it's not like I have a choice...It's not like I can stop time or rewind life back to October 24th.

Okay, skip the negativity part.

Every new beginning, every fresh start of the academic year/semester, I always take into mind that I have to be better. I have to push myself harder to gain more knowledge regarding nursing so I can improve my skills and become not only a good and skillful nurse but also one who is compassionate, patient and caring enough not to let her laziness get in the way of her capability to help those in need. Because believe me, in nursing, endless monitoring of vital signs, admissions, bed bath, drug administration, utos-dun-utos-dito can make you feel like life is routine based and that idea of "being a hero to people's life" in the back of your head can just fall off with one snap. It's never easy to maintain these type of motivations ("nursing is a one-way ticket to heaven", "nursing is a rewarding personal endeavor", "nursing touches people's life in significant ways", "nursing is like being an angel on Earth beside a patient who has lost all hopes in living") behind my aching feet when I'm  busy caring for my patients. It's not everyday I get hopeful. It's not everyday (no matter how many times I impose to myself, to my brain, to my heart) that i get very eager to help people. I admit - I try everyday to be the good and loving person that I really am but there are just days when loads of work pile up and you forget to be
human
humane.

I never really become the person I always expect myself to be. Everytime na lang i list down the things im supposed to do - nothing happens. The moment I step in class, everything's gone in an instant. I can't be that student who can sit still and listen attentively to a four hour NCM lecture. I can't be that student who takes minor subjects as if they were majors. I slack off, i procrastinate, I cram, I find things useless, I find lectures boring, I sleep in class, i don't study BIG TIME for short quizzes (well, not ALL the time), I play fruit ninja while my classmates are reporting --- yeah, that's basically how my life as a nursing student is. And no, I didn't just list those down to show you that i'm proud because im one of those I-DONT-STUDY-YET-I-GET-HIGHER-GRADES-THAN-THOSE-PEOPLE-WHO-STUDIED-AND-WASTED-THEIR-TIME-LISTENING-TO-LECTURE-WHILE-I-WAS-SLEEPING-AT-THE-BACK-OF-THE-CLASS type of student. I listed all my faults as a student because I am ashamed of what i've become.

I've been constantly asking myself, what if I continued to be the student that i was back in first year college? Will I be as happy as I am now? or will I be as contented as I was before?

Without the intention to brag and i do hope that you don't get the information in such a way - out of the 5 semesters in college, I've been on the dean's list 3 times. It's a wonderful thing, y'know, to have all your hard work paid off at the end of the day. But everytime I look at my report card, I ask myself "Am I proud? Am I genuinely happy?" For some reason, deep inside - I never was. And that continually bothers me. Okay, maybe at one point I was and that would be during my first semester in college because I know (and my college friends know) that I kicked my butt off and worked tirelessly and poured all my strengths in studying. And at that moment when I saw my name on the list even though i was like...at the bottom part of the list -  HELL, I WAS A DAMN PROUD NURSING STUDENT. :)

And i want that feeling back. I want to be sincerely, profoundly and genuinely, genuinely genuinely HAPPY for all things i've done - without regrets and "what ifs".  I want to be eternally thankful for all those moments i decided to study instead of trashtalking people behind their backs. I don't want to be congratulated for something I didn't sincerely devout myself in. I'd rather get low grades for things I know I worked hard for than get empty achievements in life and praises I know for myself I never deserved from the beginning. Because, it's okay to fail. It really is. And this has been said a million times but you just gotta stand again and prove to them there's more to you than failure...that you're a better human being than they are. That you're so much more worth it. 

I really don't know how I'm going to regain back my old studious self ... I don't know how i'm going to relive my old values which I clearly promised to live by forever ( not forever, unfortunately).

Well, anyway. I was trying to remember what motivated me to study so hard before. For the past 2 semesters I've always put into mind that everything I do will not be for me, but for others. However... that didn't seem to motivate me as much. Maybe due to the lack of clarity. For "others" - but who?

A bond paper is posted on my wall that says "When you work, you always use the happiness of the people you love as your motivation - never for the awards or people's praises"

So to the people I love - my sister, my brother but most importantly to the two people i owe my whole existence to, my parents - This semester, Every hard work and every inch of success will be dedicated to you. My motivation for this semester will be centered on you. So that everytime I slack off - i will think of all the sacrifices you guys have done for me, for all those days you have worked tirelessly in order to send me to school. As of now, I have no capability of producing enough money to make you travel the world or to repay you with all the great things you've blessed and shared with me. So this is all I have to offer - sense of responsibility, passion and hard work.

Time is ticking much faster than we've all expected and I believe that aside from my studies and grades, there's also another thing I want to promise - Visibility. I want to be "visible" to my parents. To have my physical presence with them whenever they're home or when we're together. I need to stop spending too much time in my room and living in social networks. I need to spare time for my parents. I need to love them more. I need to show them genuine love through the little efforts I make. After all, life is not about the big things, it's about the little small things that mean the world to you.

*sorry for the long post! :)