As unbelievable as it may seem, you will reach a point in your new career path where you ask yourself it it is the right job for you or if the low pay is worth it. Some of us hit this small bump in the road sooner than others. I would imagine there are some that hit it more frequently than others. But, the simple truth is that you WILL indeed hit it at some point. Being prepared can help you get around this.
My personal bump came about 4 months into my journey with the regulatory department. Several things contributed to this. One was that some of the benefits of having this particular position were based on being able to receive various monatary rewards related to certain benefits provided by working for the goevernment. Many of these have been widdled away at in the past 15 months or so since the recession hit. This meant the same amount of work, for less actual money. That would have been more tolerable if I had not been the single sole bread winner in our household.
On top of this, I learned the very hard truth that while I may have picked up on other jobs I had done very quickly and easily, this was not the case in this one.
Now, this was messing with my job satisfaction. I actually became fearful of being fired because the supervisors obviously thought I was the dumbest nurse they had ever hired. It took awhile before I began to believe them when they told me I would not feel truly comfortable in my job for about a year. I have now passed that point and have learned it is absolutely true. At some point, a light bulb came on and I suddently began to feel confident of my knowledge.
As I said, this was different from any other position I had held. I am pretty much a straight A student with a type A personality. The more you tell me I'm doing great, the better I do. The more responsibility you put on my shoulders, the happier I am. Just let me know you appreciate me and I'll do back flips around everyone else.
That is far from what this job feels like. Today, for instance, I had the audacity to feel a little smug that I was getting the task of writing the survey results pretty well when, boom, there was an email from my supervisor telling me not to get complacent. I'm still making errors. Ouch!!
Because of this unique position and the unique learning curve, I am going to spread this topic across 1-2 more posts in the next couple of days.
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