After reading this module and with one year in the nursing program, reflect on this question: Is

nursing your calling? Does your reason in enrolling to the nurse profession changed? Why?

To be completely honest, I never really saw nursing as something I’d take for a career, let alone a
calling. For the most part of senior high, I’ve always set my sights on becoming a sailor, a man
who would go on gallivanting throughout the high seas, travelling across the world, and writing
my own book about the stories I managed to collect as the peaceful twilight of my years came to
pass. I always convinced myself that a life dedicated to the service of others was not something
that was cut out for me and I was better off getting stuck on some unknown part of the world
reading my books and living my own life. Nevertheless, that did not hinder me from taking
whatever chances life threw at me, and upon my mother’s insistence for which I am thankful, I
took every college entrance exam I could get my hands on. By the time I received word that I
passed the CNU-CN entrance exam, I was already admitted as a probationary midshipman in the
ranks of the PMMA and for me, CNU was just another backup plan. However, life as we know it,
has its own ways of subverting one’s expectations because for the first time in my life, I became
another lost soul who kept wandering aimlessly into the dark. The backup plan was not exactly
something that I was inclined but at this point I had already run out of options so I might as well
get on with it anyway.

Throughout the first year of the nursing program, I came to realize a few things about nursing and
myself that I would not have otherwise known were it not for the people around me. Nursing was
not what I had originally thought it would be and what I thought to be merely a job and a means to
an end was actually something far more profound as my understanding and knowledge about the
subject grew deeper. Our clinical instructor in Anatomy, particularly Sir Eye was the one person
who made me fall in love with nursing. He may have had these little quirks one might find odd in a
person, but he was a man who had a deep love and passion for the subject. Admittedly, the first
few months were the hardest, but it was also the period where I grew the most as a person.

He had this fire in his eyes whenever he came up and discussed his lessons in the front of the
class and the manner by which he was a warm and supportive figure who always pushed us to
always become better versions of ourselves is something that will always remain my memory. My
clinical instructors, friends, and the supportive environment of the Nursing Department made me
realize how there was so much more to nursing than I thought. So yes, as of this moment, I finally
see nursing as a calling now that I’ve come to realize the joy and satisfaction that comes with a
life being lived to serve others and I went from that person who merely saw nursing as a job and
a means to an end, to a person who genuinely wishes to touch and improve the lives of others.
My reasons for persevering have indeed changed and as to why, it could’ve been the people, the
nurturing environment, maybe even the air-conditioning that gave me the motivation to stay.
Perhaps it was all these that came together all at once I suppose, nevertheless I am thankful for
this experience and perhaps, just maybe, we find the best things in life when we’re not looking for
them.