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Nursing Career and Climbing Adventure

• November 2015
• Hi Steph Simple Living Climb Fly

Hi Steph,
I’m sure you get this often, but you are one of my biggest inspirations in climbing, flying, and overall wellbeing.

Currently, I’m learning Italian in Italy for a year before entering nursing school. After, I plan to head to Yosemite for a couple of months to become more familiar with trad climbing. I’ve climbed the East Buttress of El Cap but not the Nose, which is my ultimate goal.

Taking time off to master trad climbing and hopefully climb El Cap contradicts the 3 year nursing school program. I’m already taking a year off to study Italian (another dream of mine) so it may be difficult to take even more time away from school to pursue my climbing goals.

Nursing provides income and independence; however, it doesn’t allow me to pursue my climbing goals. I cannot take 2-3 months away from my nursing job to go climb in the valley especially when just starting my career. So I’m wondering if you think it’s smarter to finish this year in Italy and then enter school/career or take another year off to finish other dreams before I feel too tied down. Right now, I have no obligations and little student loans. The world feels widely open, but I am starting to feel the pressure towards getting a serious job. The question is when…
Thanks for reading,
Sydnie

Hi Sydnie,
My boyfriend Ian just got his first nursing job at the Moab Hospital, and has faced a lot of the same questions. So since I have someone here who’s been through a similar decision process, I figured we could just ask him!

Ian grew up in Maryland and got an industrial engineering degree at Purdue. He then got an engineering job in southern Virginia, but quickly realized that he didn’t like the schedule, the lifestyle–generally, the corporate experience. Now what….? Since he wasn’t sure, he went to Africa for 8 months as a volunteer for a community resource program in organic farming techniques. While in Africa, Ian decided he wanted to go to nursing school, because this would be a job with a lot of flexibility and opportunity for learning and helping people. He got accepted to nursing school at University of Maryland Baltimore in 2009, but unexpectedly got an offer to help start a company in DC, so he deferred for a year.

Ian’s a skydiver and base jumper: while in nursing school, he got his tandem rating as a way to pay for school. When he graduated, he felt the pull to get out west, keep skydiving and do the whole live-in-a-van thing, at least for a year. He also wasn’t sure if he’d rather live in Arizona, California or Utah. So he got a van and worked as a tandem master in Arizona, California and then Utah, did lots of base jumping, kite surfing, paragliding and climbing and then decided it was time to start nursing. Ian’s whole timeline of events went like this: he went to nursing school when he was 29 and finished when he was 31 in May of 2012. He took the NCLX in January 2015, waited another six months to apply for jobs, and got his first nursing job when he was 34.

Me: Ian, what’s your advice for Sydnie, based on the way you got into nursing?

Ian: Definitely take the NCLX right away. Taking it 2.5 years out of school was hard. Also realize that you can get accepted to school and defer admission. You can take a year off, knowing that you are on track to go to school at the end of the year.

If there’s an immediate thing that you want to do that will take a long time (i.e., being a dirtbag climber for a year), you should experience it before starting school. Learn to live in your car on little to no money, it’s a great experience. I don’t recommend everyone do it for the rest of their life, but I certainly recommend everyone do it. Because you learn to live on a very small budget and then when you start working you don’t need to earn a very large income to live comfortably.

Me: Is there anything you would have done differently with the way you got into nursing?

Ian: I was really contemplating just moving to Utah right away, getting some kind of job to get residency and applying to school in Salt Lake. I think that would have been a better option–with the activities I wanted to get into, hang gliding, paragliding, speed flying, I probably would have met friends in school doing the same activities. There’s a lot of skydiving, base jumping, skiing and climbing going on in Salt Lake. It’s easier to find people to do stuff with. You know you have a very limited time in school as to when you can do things, so you don’t want to be wasting it on trying to find people to do stuff with. Going to nursing school in Baltimore, I was limited to jumping towers at night and skydiving on the weekends, so that made it difficult for school because of the night recreation schedule. Had I come to Utah, where the activities I want to do are available during the day, all week long, I would have been sleeping more at night.

Me: So as always, it’s all about location?

Ian: Think about balance: be where you can do both school and recreation at the same time. Essentially for an outdoorsy climber-type person you need to live in one of a few cities: Salt Lake, Bozeman, Durango, Boulder, Tucson, probably a handful of others, where you are in really close proximity to the things you want to do so you can go out and do something active during an afternoon, or a day or two off. If you want to get better at something while you’re in school–climbing, flying, whatever–you have to live somewhere you can train and get skills while you’re in school.

The location requirements change a little once you actually start a nursing job. Nursing provides you the opportunity to work wherever you want and a schedule that’s really flexible. If you go for shift work, you can string 6 shifts together and have 8 days off. If you choose a location in close proximity to a lot of good climbing, you work for 6 days (and train and recover during the work cycle), and then have 8 days to travel somewhere, which is a lot of time. Or if you want a different rest schedule, you can work 3 days on, 3 days off. At that point then you can live in a place that has a 6 hour driving radius of things around you, which opens up a lot of options. For example, if you like Yosemite, you can live and work in many different cities in California and have the ability to continuously be spending 6-8 day periods in the Valley. Or you can get into travel nursing. As a travel nurse, you can live in different places you’re interested in checking out for chunks of time, and you can also take even larger chunks of time off.

Me: Would you suggest taking a year off before starting nursing school or after finishing?

Ian: The best thing that happened in my case was when I decided I was ready to start nursing, I had the schooling done, and I just had to take the NCLX and apply for jobs. I think you could do both actually: apply to nursing school and then defer starting for a year. Then when you graduate, take the NCLX right away and then take off 6 months to a year before applying for a job. At that point, you’ve done a lot of traveling and climbing, and you’re probably excited about starting nursing, and you have enough experience in your sport to be able to really take advantage of the flexibility and time off you get in nursing.

Once you get a couple years of experience in nursing, the beauty of it is that you can take time off and return to nursing.

Me: How’s it working out so far with nursing? Are you glad you pulled the trigger?

Ian: So far I’m really happy with nursing as a job and I’m glad I’ve done so many other things along the way so I never have to ask what if, and I can appreciate the benefits of nursing when things are hard or taking some sacrifice. I’m working with interesting people and learning a lot, and there are a lot of opportunities for me to advance as much as I want in the job. And it is really flexible: I have a lot more time off than when I was doing tandems. My plan is to get trained in the ER in Moab to get triage experience and then ICU to learn more about body systems. I’d like to become a CRNA (Certified Nurse Anaesthetist) and also do a stint with flight nursing so I can be on a bird somewhere.