I’m better than I thought, you are too

I’ve really been struggling

I’ve long wanted to become a nursing professor and now I am. I always felt like I’d be a good nursing professor… until I came one. This week, I have really struggled. I’m simply going day by day, trying to put together a plan for the next day. I constantly feel like I should be able to get further ahead, but I’m not there yet.

Today, I really felt this. Like, physically. I could feel the tightness in my chest and the tension in my shoulders. Yeah, I could actually feel it.

It got to the point where I was sitting in my office at the university and wondering if I made the wrong decision in taking this job, in getting my master’s degree, or even thinking that I could do this job.

But, I had to go to class

Regardless of how I might have been feeling, I had to go to class. So I did. Part way through the class my boss, the director of the nursing program, walks in. She was there to address the students, but she hung out for like 20 minutes or more as I did my thing.

I wrapped up what I was doing and turned them over to her so she could speak to them for a few minutes. And then I didn’t think anything more of it.

She called me

Fast forward a few hours and I’m sitting on the couch in my living room, having just finished dinner. Then my phone rings.

It’s my boss.

The 10-year-old boy inside me that always thinks he’s in trouble immediately starts freaking out. I tell him to shut up and I answer the phone. She then tells me that she called to tell me how impressed she was during the time she spent in my class. She said that she really felt like I had found my niche.

I’m better than I thought, and so are you

My boss had no idea about my emotional struggles from this morning. She didn’t know that I was nearly in tears on the way to work. Like a good man, or really any person, I pushed down what I was feeling, put on a happy face, and went to work. She didn’t know any of that.

When she came to my class, she didn’t see my feelings of inadequacy, my doubts about my ability or self-worth, or my wondering if I had made the wrong decision. What she saw was a passionate, gifted teacher doing his thing. What she saw was a group of college freshmen totally engaged with a bald, grey-bearded, middle-aged nursing professor. It’s crazy how different the picture she saw was compared to the one I had painted in my head.

I guess I really am better than I thought.

And you know what… you are too… even if you don’t feel it.