Life's "Imbalance"

Today my blog is going to be about my struggle with working a full time job, going to school and trying to have some kind of life.  I work a full time job as a nursing assistant at Samaritan Bethany Heights.  I work in the rehabilitation area.  In the rehabilitation area, we care for eldery residents who have been sent from the hospital with a previous injury. Each day we have to learn about new residents and there injury status and rehabilitation progress.  Then we proceed to take care of their daily needs as we see will help them in the best possible way.  This is a very physical job with alot of moving around, getting supplies as needed, and going from resident to resident.  This is a very critical thinking job, also. A nursing assistant, when entering a room, needs to keep in mind each type of injury and how it affects the patient.  We are expected to remember and chart the residents behaviors, and the type of care we gave them. After a long day of eight hours or more of work, I am physically and mentally exhausted.

On my drive home, I immediately begin to think of all the school work that is due for that day. I try to get right to any assignment as it is given, so I may leave room for any new assignments.  Most of the assignments require a long drawn out thought process, in addition to the critical thinking that I just finished with at my job. Sometimes these assignments can take hours to complete.  There are many nights when I am working on assignments until past midnight.  The alarm clock goes off way too early those mornings!

A full day of going to work and doing school assignments leaves me with no time for family and friends, and extra outside activities. I feel as though my entire young life is being spent making money to live, and going to school to be able to make more money to keep up with the cost of living. This leaves me with very little, or no time to actually have any sort of enjoyment in my life. I try to balance my school, my employment, and my outside life, but have yet to find enough time to fit all of it in. Then I look over at the laundry pile and the stack of dishes and realize I can't have an outside life!