Describe a risk you took that you do not regret.

Eighteen or so months ago I was becoming increasingly unhappy at my job and was desperate for a change. What made things even worse was the realization that being a nurse was never part of my dharma.

Given, there can be a lot of different opportunities and places to work as a nurse, I felt I’d done most of them and was no longer interested in any of it.

I was tired of the twelve hour days/night shifts and had landed back into a Monday-Friday job in a clinic working with an OB/GYN. Which was fine. But really I just felt like a glorified secretary, getting paid a nurse’s wage. So dissatisfied.

I had applied for a job as the Manager of the homeless shelter here in town, thinking something more skewed towards social work would be ideal. But it’s hard to find a job with similar pay to what I was used to, without having to go back to school. So I turned down the homeless shelter job.

Then I bumped into an old coworker. She was teaching nursing at the college here, University College of the North, or UCN for short. She told me of a job opportunity that had nothing to do with nursing but was to teach the Healthcare Aide Program.

I jumped on it. Healthcare Aides are an integral part of healthcare yet it was not “nursey”. In my wheelhouse most definitely.

The catch was, the job was posted as a six month term and not a permanent position as they did not yet have the funding to make it permanent.

I had twenty-four years of seniority as a nurse. I had accrued vacation and seniority hours for twenty-four years. As a nurse, that’s everything. Seniority is like your ranking. You get to choose and be approved of vacation, based on your seniority.

I was near the top. I was one of the “old-timers”. So I did apply for a leave of absence so that I could keep my position, seniority hours and accrued vacation (seven weeks), in case this teaching job did in fact end after six months.

But I was denied the leave of absence.

So I quit. My coworkers thought I was insane. To give up almost a quarter of a century of seniority hours to jump into a term position and start all over. I’d had less than five years to go until I could retire. In fact my “magic 80” was May of 2028. But right before the finish line I quit the race.

I’m happy to say I absolutely love my job now. Teaching is fun. So much less pressure than being a nurse. I work in an environment where mostly everyone there, is happy to be there. There’s an energy in those walls. Nobody is sick or dying. It’s such a complete 360. Or 180. Or whatever the saying is.

My risk paid off, fingers crossed. Oh and the job did become permanent.