Life is not so good right now. School seems harder than ever. I am exhausted. When I look in the mirror I see a haggard woman that I hardly recognize. The problem is that all of a sudden, nursing jobs for new grads have dried up. I am hearing about hospitals that have initiated hiring freezes, something that was unthinkable just six months ago. Charlottesville has only two hospitals and I interviewed at one of them and have not yet heard back. I didn’t really want to work at the other hospital in town, but looked at it as my back-up hospital, but now they aren’t hiring anyway. Two of my other back-up hospitals are not hiring–both of these hospitals are an hour away from me. There are other hospitals, all at least an hour away, but I have put off applying because I really don’t have time for job interviews right now.

Q. But Patience, what about the nursing shortage?

A. With the economy in the crapper, retired nurses are returning to the workforce, part-time nurses are switching to full time, and hospitals don’t have the money to invest in training new grads.

So I am doing all this work, getting up at 4:30am on clinical days, spending 8-10 hours writing care plans, taking exams, freaking out with anxiety about not performing well in clinicals (and pediatric clinicals are terrifying for me), for nothing. In previous semesters, the thing that kept me going was the knowlege that I’d have a good job that I enjoy at the end of it all and now I don’t have that motivator.

Add to that chronic sleep deprivation and the stresses of home life, such as my kids being endlessly sick this winter, and I am a wreck. I can’t carry on a decent social conversation, I’ve headache every single day for the past three weeks, my husband is frustrated with me, my kids are miserable, I can’t find any enjoyment in life other than tea and books, and even the tea doesn’t taste good anymore.

I’m thinking that if all else fails I could join the navy. Or work in a nursing home, but even the navy is more appealing to me than a nursing home.