A few years ago (too many to count really!) I graduated with a Masters (MBA in Healthcare) from Western Governors University. The experience was terrific (considering its the only advance degree I’ve ever completed) and for anyone that’s exploring their chosen field (or another field, for that matter), I would highly recommend it.
That being said, the Masters was a degree that I probably didn’t need professionally. I was thinking about it the other day. Was my MBA something that really benefitted me in any way, considering the amount of time I spent, and the financial cost? (which, by the way, is minimal compared to many other educational institutions/paths)
Maybe, maybe not. Like the BSN from Seattle Pacific University before it, the MBA from WGU was something I thought I had to have “in order to fit in”. The basic nurses training I received decades ago, at Kelsey Institute in Saskatoon, would have been perfectly adequate education for all my nursing adventures. I keep telling my wife, Jan, everything I ever needed to know about nursing I learned from my first, Kelsey clinical instructor, Evelyn Klein. And to this day, I’m not sure I should have even been in nursing school.
Today, I look back on all of this and just shake my head. Why? Well, I can invent all sorts of stories and myths about how my life turned out the way did. Had I known more, would things have turned out differently? Who knows.
Today, I’m retired (happily). I have the girl of dreams, sleeping beside me every night. I have a successful career (sort of) to look back on (although there are some things I would have done differently). No regrets–okay, almost no regrets. Every morning, I count my blessings. It’s called a gratitude practice now.
The one thing I am looking forward to, is that the girl of my dreams will get to spend more time with me in the near future (if she wishes). All in all, what I’ve done so far has been successful.
They say (the famous “they”) that any success to have must me measured in effort, not effects. I guess, after the route my life has taken, I would have to agree. I’m watching the neighbor across our lake this morning. He has just finished spending what I think is an enormous amount of money, landscaping his yard. The landscapers are installing a metal fence along the water, with the idea I think of (hopefully) dissuading the huge population of Canada Geese populating the fellows back lawn.
I’m thinking, “Yep. Just wait until the landscapers are gone. The geese will hop the new fence, and it will be business as usual.”
Funny how life always works out!