Wings of a Bird

Nursing student still works long hours, but the reward is priceless - Seattle P-I
It's a leap from working on Wall Street to being a student nurse at the University of Washington, but former New Yorker Mike Nicholls has made it with a smile on his face.
... Nicholls had plenty of time to think about his financial career when he wound up in a New York hospital four years ago suffering from mental and physical exhaustion. He said he used the time to reflect on his life and decided he wanted to be part of something larger, more meaningful and humane.
A nurse named Irene who cared for him in the hospital became his role model. When he began considering a major career change, he was drawn to nursing because of the compassion Irene and other nurses demonstrated.
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His parents, emigrants from the Bahamas, raised their four children in Brooklyn. His mother was a teacher and his father worked for the Transit Authority. Nicholls was the youngest child, born four minutes after his twin brother, Ed.
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"I know I'll never make as much as I would have at JP Morgan," Nicholls said. (Washington nurses average about $63,500 annually.) "But the daily sense of satisfaction can't be bought."
Although he won't graduate from the UW until 2008, he's already planning to specialize in mental health. He said he was reared in a culture where depression or other mental health issues were not discussed, and those afflicted were looked down upon.
"You were considered less of a man, expected to snap out of it if you were down," he said. ...

Labels: compassionate people, mental illness