I’ve tried to write some version of this post three times now, starting from a broad perspective and slowly focusing in on my personal complaint, bringing in different views and sides of the story. Unfortunately, I haven’t managed to finish any of those. It seems the peculiar nature of my grievance on this occasion lends itself more easily to a sort of gloomy malaise liable to cause antipathy and writer’s block than the kind of righteous indignation that propels good essays.
Still, I need to get these points off my chest somehow. So I’m opting for a more direct approach: I’m upset. There are many reasons why I’m upset, but the main ones pertain to trying to apply to college. I get the impression from my friends who have had to go through the same that college applications may just be a naturally upsetting process. In a best case scenario, you wait in suspense for several weeks for a group of strangers to pass judgement on your carefully-laid life plans; indeed, on your moral character.
Or, if you’re me, you’ve had enough curveballs in your life so far that the pretense of knowing what state you’ll be in and what to do a year from now, let alone four years from now and for the rest of your life, seems ridiculous to the verge of lunacy. So you pull your hair and grit your teeth, and flip coins to choose majors because the application is due in two hours and you can’t pick undecided. So you write post-hoc justifications for why you chose that major, hoping that you’re a good enough writer that whoever reads it doesn’t see through your bluff.
Although certainly anxiety inducing, this isn’t the main reason why I’m upset. I just felt it needed to be included in the context here. While I was researching majors to possibly pick, I came across nursing. This is a field in which I have a fair amount of experience. After all, I spent more time in school in the nurse’s office than in a classroom. I happen to know that there is a global shortage of nurses; more pronounced, indeed, than the shortage of doctors. As a result, not only are there plenty of open jobs with increasing wages and benefits, but there are a growing number of scholarship opportunities and incentives programs for training.
Moreover, I also know that there is an ongoing concerted effort in the nursing field to attempt to correct the staggering gender imbalance, which cake about as a result of Florence Nightingale’s characterization of nursing as the stereotypically feminine activity; a characterization which in recent years has become acutely harmful to the field. Not only has this characterization discouraged young men who might be talented in the field, and created harmful stereotypes, but it has also begun to have an effect on women who seek to establish themselves as independent professionals. It seems the “nursing is for good girls” mentality has caused fewer “good girls”, that is, bright, driven, professional women, to apply to the field, exacerbating the global shortage.
In other words, there is a major opportunity for people such as myself to do some serious good. It’s not as competitive or high pressure as med school, and there are plenty of nursing roles that aren’t exposed to contagion, and so wouldn’t be a problem for my disability. The world is in dire need of nurses, and gender is no longer a barrier. Nursing is a field that I could see myself in, and would be willing to explore.
There’s just one problem: I’m not allowed into the program. My local university, or more specifically, the third-party group they contract with to administer the program, has certain health requirements in order to minimize liability. Specifically, they want immune titers (which I’ve had done before, and never not been deficient).
I understand the rationale behind these restrictions, even if I disagree with them for personal reasons. It’s not a bad policy. Though cliched to say, I’m not angry so much as disappointed. And even then, I’m not sure precisely with whom it is that I find myself disappointed.
Am I disappointed with the third-party contractor for setting workplace safety standards to protect both patients and students, and to adhere to the law in our litigious society? With the university, for contracting with a third party in the aim of giving its students hands-on experience? With the law, for having such high standards of practice for medical professionals? I find it hard to find fault, even accidental fault, with any of these entities. So what, then? Am I upset with myself for being disabled, and for wanting to help others as I have been helped? Maybe; probably, at least a little bit. With the universe, for being this way, that bad outcomes happen just as a result of circumstances? Certainly. But raging at the heavens doesn’t get me anywhere.
I know that I’m justified in being upset. My disability is preventing me from helping others and doing good: that is righteous anger if ever there was a right reason to be angry. A substantial part of me wants to be upset; to refuse to allow anyone or anything from standing in the way of my doing what I think is right, or to dictate the limits of my abilities. I want to be a hero, to overcome the obstacles in my path, to do the right thing no matter the cost. But I’m not sure in this instance the obstacles need to be overcome.
I don’t know where that leaves me. Probably something about a tragic hero.