The Perfect Job

There comes a time in life when you have to make a decision on what career is going to make you happy. When I was younger I had thought that being a nurse or a teacher was the path I would follow to have a career that I enjoyed. However, as I have gotten older I have realized that even though both nursing and teaching are very noble and wonderful professions, they are just not the path that I myself should take.

I started my college career in January of 2005, to obtain my Associates of Applied Science in Early Childhood Education. I loved the teachers, the knowledge and skills that I was gaining. I finished my first two semesters while continuing in my customer service job. In my third semester, I decided that I needed to get some hands on experience and took a part time position at a local preschool. Keeping in mind that I was not only working 30 plus hours a week with twenty, three year old children, but I also had my own eighteen month old at home, plus taking a full course load at school and working to keep a marriage and house running.

To say the least I was just a little stressed out. However I continued on to my fourth and fifth semesters, when I realized that teaching was not going to be my personal life ambition. I loved working with children, I loved the people I worked with but the stress was taking its toll. My marriage was in ruins, my youngest son and I were in a homeless shelter and school was out of the question for the moment. I decided to take another teaching position closer to a new apartment that we had found and start looking at what I really wanted to do with my life.

I returned to looking at nursing schools and thought very long and very hard about it. I didn't want to waste anymore time into a profession that wasn't going to make me happy. I weighed out the pros and cons of the situation, and at last I came to the decision that nursing wasn't the correct path either. I'm not afraid of blood or anything like that; I had worked in a long term care facility right out of high school. The main reason I chose not to pursue a career in nursing was the fact that when I had been pregnant with my youngest child, I had been given a spinal tap, not a huge deal except that I remember the nurse holding me down and I knew that I couldn't do that while someone was in pain. I know that the nurse that helped me that day was doing his job, but it wasn't something that I could do and feel comfortable with.

I took my time looked at schools, looked up all kinds of careers that I was interested in, and that's when it happened. I found out more about a career that I had been interested in as a child, Paralegal. Growing up our next door neighbor and family friend, was a paralegal for one of the local law firms in town and when her children and I would play, it always came down to playing office and we were always lawyers or paralegals. I know it sounds silly, but looking back at it was one of the best times in my life. I had considered it before joining the military, but had chose the military to be able to do more with my life and for my family at that time.

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