Mission at Work: Amanda's Work/Life Balance

Would you say that you're proud of your mom?

Yes, I would.

Why would you say that?

Because she's doing this for us. Because she's doing this for us. And that, because she wants us to have. She wants us to be okay. And she wants us... She cares for us a lot. And so she's a really good mom. And so she's doing it, just because she cares about us so much.

This is our skills kit. I can't remember the actual name of him, but I named him "Justin Bleeder." And this is where I practice IVs and central lines and ostomy bags and trach tubes. And then each semester, I get a box like this that is full of these different supplies. So what I'm doing tonight, is I'll be doing a blood administration video. So here you have the supplies you need for that. I've got my O-negative blood. Dexter always has to see what's in them. I've got saline. I always love opening it and seeing what the message is. Inside says: "Let us never consider ourselves as finished nurses, we must be learning all our lives." Florence Nightingale quote. And then there's always something on the bottom. Think this says, "Woohoo, you did it, you're one step closer to being a nurse!"

So I save those. And I'll be happy to get rid of it all someday. But they're really helpful for practicing and working on my skills. And I like being able to, like I said, do things as many times as I need to. You just kind of get creative. Like I used a banana for IV assertions, and I did my first IV video, I hung it from my shower curtain in my bathroom and filmed it in there. My kids, we don't use kids anymore. But my kids were my range of motion videos, my head-to-toe assessment videos. My husband was my neurological assessment video last week. You just kind of get creative and practice until you feel comfortable. And then when you go to the in-person component, and you've already done these skills, a lot of times you've already been checked off. And I mean, that's your chance to implement them in real life.

What do you tell people to make time?

"I think the first thing is be organized. And if you aren't organized, learn to get organized." And it sounds silly coming from somebody with ADHD with a 10-foot stack of papers behind them. But that's how my brain works, to see things, to know where things are. And one of the things not having time for picking the things up. But what doesn't get sacrificed is my schoolwork. It's organized all the time. Every week, on Monday morning, lay out a plan, whether you use a planner like I do, I've seen people who do a wall of post-it notes and they put one assignment on each post-it note and then they rip it down when they're done. The accomplishment, the feeling of accomplishment when you get to cross everything off really helps motivate you. Little things like that really motivate you. But you have to stay organized, you have to know how much work you have in a week. So that so that's why I think on like a weekly basis because Nightingale is like week by week by week.

So every Monday morning, I'm laying out what assignments are due. I'm putting them on paper and I'm crossing them off when I'm finished. And I double check it. And then I look at where the webinars are that I have to go to and I plan those. And then I pick up shifts for work. So I'll say, "Okay, my webinars for this semester on this day, this day this day." So I try and find a day or two that I can consolidate the ones I have to go to the mandatory ones. And then I know these are the ones, these are the days I can work. The other thing I would say is good advice is, "Learn your learning style."

How I learned when I went to school when I was 18 is so different from how I learn now. When I was 18, in college the first time I would literally sit in a lecture, doodle on my paper, take notes. And it would be kind of messy, and I would listen and I would be engaged. But when I got home, I would recopy my notes and make them more organized. And writing is one of the ways I learned is by like, hands on by doing with my hands or writing out my notes or recopy them, I would absorb it all. And then I wouldn't even have to study for tests. It was all just in there. It is not that way anymore. My 41-year-old brain does not work like my 18-year-old brain. So, heads up! Like in case you're wondering, it doesn't work the same later. And I learned that I have to have different modalities. I have to listen to it. I have to write it down. And it's not so much about teaching yourself. It's ensuring that you really know it. It's a different way of looking at it. You know, people don't say like, "Oh, I had to teach myself how to do this." Well, what? That's life! That's you know, you have to learn how to do it and if you can't, if you don't understand it, then be accountable to saying to someone, "I don't understand this. Can you help me understand this? Can you present this to me a different way? This doesn't make sense to me. Do you have a resource I could look at?"

Talk to the librarian. Talk to your professor. I've had Teams meetings with the professors that were in my class, but weren't my specific professor, because I connected with them more on their webinars. Their learning style made more sense. When I started pharmacology, there's four different professors giving webinars. I went to all four for the first three weeks until I found the one that I actually liked. Yeah, and it took more time in the beginning. But then I only had to go to one guy's webinar the rest of semester because the way he taught it made sense to me. I told my husband all the time, "I'm gonna go to school until one day, there will be a day where I want to just throw my computer out the window and never look at it again. I'll write one more paper. I might unplug. That's when I'll know I'll be done going to school. Until then, I'll probably just keep going and get as much done as I can!"

And, you know, I've done homework everywhere. I have taken homework to the waterpark and let them play on the toys while I'm sitting in the shade under an umbrella doing flashcards. Getting on the Silverwood Theme Park here, drive to that it's a couple of hours away. And we've got a pass to that a couple of summers ago. And that came with WiFi and I would have my laptop and be doing lessons, Sherpa app lessons while my kids are swimming. Take a break when you get hot, jump in, come back, keep doing homework. I do I take a packet up to every softball game we go to and when she's pitching, I'm cheering for her. And when she's hitting, I'm cheering for her and her team and the hour break between game one and game two. I'm on the computer working on my papers. So you just got to be really good with time management. But I can't remember last time I read something that wasn't nursing related. But I do love to read and that is definitely on my goals list. As soon as I graduate, I'm going to go by the trashiest smutt airport novel that requires zero brain cells to read. And I'm going to read that outside on a beach somewhere.

I do online health and fitness coaching. And I do work out at least five times a week and I do it here at home just like school. It's part of probably knock on wood why I've been working in COVID unit for over two years, and I haven't gotten COVID since I take his good as part of that it's probably good infection control. But part of that is doing the best job I can to take care of myself and my health. You know, 10 years ago, I was 100 pounds heavier, even before I had kids, and I was tired all the time. Hurt all the time. I'd get out in the morning of bed in the morning, my knees are sore, back hurt. I was 30. I mean, you know, I have a hopefully a lot more life left in me and I'm an older mom, my kids are 11 and eight. But I'm 41. So most of most of my peers that I graduated high school with their kids are going to prom and off to college right now. And my kids are still in elementary school. So I've got to be able to keep up with them. And that's kind of a big reason why it became so important to me.

And I think one of the best things you can do is focus on what you can control what you can change, not what you can. So I had this kind of moment where it's actually my daughter, Olivia was three. And she came up and she put one hand on each of my cheeks and got right up in my face like only a little kids can. She looked me right in the eyes from this far away. She said, "Are you happy mommy?" I just I was just like, I always knew when I was mom, I was not going to be one of those moms wives their kids all the time. I'm honest with my daughter were in good relationship, this and that. And here she's three. And my instinct was to lie to her because,"Of course I'm happy, right?" And I was not happy. And that was a big realization moment for me. And that's when I looked, I looked at her and I said, you know, "What?" Kids always assume everyone's happy, because they're happy people. They don't assume people are sad or depressed. They don't run around looking for nuances in emotion. You're happy. You're mad. You're sad. That's it.

So when she asked me if I was happy, I knew that she can tell it wasn't. So that was a big lightbulb moment for me. And I just said to her, "I'm not happy. But I'm going to change it." So I started focusing on what I could focus on and that meant I started taking care of my health eating better. I started doing insanity at home the workout I was 265 pounds. I couldn't even barely look at the people doing the moves without sweating and crying a little bit. But I just did what I could and I I think no one was more surprised me when I turned it on the second day. And then I did it the third day and I in the 60 days of that program. I'm I lost 55 pounds. And then I just kept going, I just picked another program and another program and it did one after the other after the other. And I started coaching and helping other people to do it. And I kind of started to believe in myself. My daughter once a few years ago saw one of these pictures of me at that stage in life, and she didn't even know what it was. And I'm just like, "That's me dude, like, you don't remember that you were like two or three or four."

But I'm glad for that. They see is just like the schoolwork they see me at home working on my homework, taking the time to do the assignments, going after a goal. I've said, "Do you see me making myself a priority and taking care of myself and my health?" So yeah, after I lost 100 pounds, after about a year of keeping that off, I wanted to do the next thing, I want to set a new goal for myself. So I always try and have one academic goal, one personal goal, you know, and one physical goal at a time to keep me motivated in those directions. And then one family goal. So you know, I never thought I could be in shape. I never thought I'd run a marathon. I never thought I would, you know, do any of these things. But that's the problem with never think.

If I accomplish. If I have job satisfaction, if I love what I do, then I will feel successful. You know, if I go to work and make a positive impact on people's lives, I was successful in what I'm doing with my life. And if if you do something that you're miserable at, you'll be miserable. Leave yourself alone is your life, right? Because there's really four here. So you got to find something you enjoy that and my goal has always been to find something that meets my kind of financial and like those kind of goals, to be able to raise my family, pay my mortgage, pay the bills, live the lifestyle that we want to live, but also fulfills those inner needs for me to give service to others to marry my passion of helping other people with also like the more productive side of things. So if I can do those things, I would say that's successful. But if you really want to be more broad -- If I can raise two successful humans -- Two happy healthy humans to adulthood, that are good people, that contribute to society, that treat others kindly, that's really my real goal. Because I'm a mom before anything else.