MaustsOnToast: Drew, Emily and Poppy Maust: Page 2

I’ve been waiting for this day for about 4 years. It all started when I was house sitting for some friends and one night I was watching a documentary on their TV about midwives. I was like, “Thats it! Thats what I wanna do!”. Well then I emigrated and discovered that a midwife in America wasn’t much like a midwife in England and I wanted to be a midwife like in England not a midwife like in America. So I decided to become a nurse and then maybe I could work on a labor and delivery ward. Thats when the journey got interesting and I got a job at Health South Rehabilitation Center in Morgantown, West Virginia. I was a level entry nursing assistant and was so nervous when I started working. It was the first time I had worked in a hospital, the first time I really worked closely with patients and the first time I worked along side real nurses. It was a great experience and confirmed to me that I wanted to pursue nursing further. At that point we knew we were going to move down to Wake Forest, so I began searching for schools near where we were to live. I found Watts and began the application process. This in itself was difficult because I had to get transcripts sent over from England and it was all a bit complicated. Finally after contacting someone, who contacted someone else, who contacted someone else all my college and high school transcripts were sent over. When we moved down here I took the entrance test and failed the first time. I was crushed and ready to give up. I have a bad history of taking tests, I get so nervous its ridiculous and I’m not very confident so I always struggle, did I tell you that I failed my American driver’s test the first time too? In England we have the Give Way sign which are Yield signs over here but in England we don’t have the equivalent of the Stop sign, so on my test I drove up to a stop sign and just kept moving really slowing like you would a Give Way sign. Little did I know that you had to come to a complete stop! Haha. My friend Marla would say I still don’t know how to drive on American roads. But Drew convinced me to take the Watts entrance test again, he said I needed to be able to say I had done everything I could otherwise I’d always regret it. So I studied some more and gave it another shot, and passed! I was in! I was officially on my way to nursing school. First I had to do the pre-requisites with Mount Olive College so in the summer of 2007 I started the pre-requisites. That took me up to Christmas and in January I started as student at Watts School of Nursing. Did you know we were in England that Christmas and we missed our connecting flight home so I was about 5 hours late on my first day of orientation!!! LOL.

As the semesters went by each one was tougher than the next in more ways than one. Semester two was the hardest in terms of course content and workload, then semester three I was pregnant with Poppy. I didn’t have nausea and vomiting during my pregnancy but I did have fainting, which wouldn’t be an issue if I had an office job but during clinicals I was on my feet alot. I remember my clinical in the newborn nursery, they kept the nursery so warm! I tried really hard to hold it together until the room started closing in on me and I looked at my instructor with panic in my eyes and said, “I need to sit down.” She grabbed me and steadied me out of the room. There were a couple of close calls during that semester but thankfully I never actually went down. Then for my last and final semester I had a newborn baby. Poppy was around 6 weeks when I started back, my sister had come over to ease the transition and I was so thankful. My emotions were all over the place and the smallest set back or bad comment I received on my work felt like my nursing career was over. It was horrible. But I was determined, so determined to finish what I had started. I kept saying to myself that I’d gotten this far and I was going to keep going until they asked me to leave. When I think back to that semester it really was a miracle that Drew and I got through that and both graduated on schedule. And I’m so thankful that Poppy was so young, she would just sleep while I studied and it was perfect, at her age now it would be extremely hard to get in enough study time.

Well we finally graduated and it was a sweet time for both of us and both sets of parents. We were all together for Christmas and it was just a magical time.

The final step was to take the state board of nursing exam and officially become a Registered Nurse. Christmas had been hectic so I booked my date with about a month in between to really get prepared because this was an exam I REALLY needed to pass on the first try, one for my own dignity and two because I already had a job waiting. I went in feeling pretty good, I knew it was going to be hard but I felt ready to give it my best shot. All I can say is there are no words to describe that exam, or my experience. But I can joyfully say that I passed am now Emily Maust, RN.

The journey has ended and I have never felt more relieved. We celebrated by going out to eat at Texas Road House and then coming home and making a bonfire The photos will tell that story, heehee. My in-laws also sent me flowers which arrived in the late afternoon, what a wonderful surprise! Today was a very good day.