Remembering What I Came Here For

Tomorrow I'm going to a welcome potluck for new midwifery students.

Finally.

The midwifery students at my school are a very, very close knit group. Since there are over 80 people in my direct entry class (the class is composed of all the specialties) it will be nice to finally break off in to our smaller group. The potluck is hosted by the second and third year students specifically to welcome us, and the email sent to us said that they were here to "help us remember what we came here for." I think this is such an important concept for midwifery students in a medical nursing program because we do spend a lot of time in the hospital, which may or may not be a setting we value as much as other nurses might. We value multiple settings for childbirth. We value education, but also non-academic experience. We are eager to learn from other types of midwives, and have lessons on things not necessarily available in a textbook, and I think that makes us slightly unique. But, that is not to say that my classmates in other specialties (ie: oncology, geriatrics, etc.) are not holistic thinkers or interested in alternative methods of solving a problem. But as a group that struggles with which "kind" of practitioner we want to be - even within the role of CNM, I think it's imperative to get out of and away from the school sometimes to remember that midwifery is a diverse profession with many entry routes, and choosing this specific route does not mean any more or less than choosing another - which is kind of hard to remember when spending every waking minute and hour in an ivory tower. I also think it is surprising to some people that there are many CNM students who weren't all that interested in nursing, generally. Some students see the RN licensure period as simply a stepping stone - a necessary step in becoming the kind of midwife they have decided to become - which basically means that some people in the program are spending a whole year learning a lot of things that they don't necessarily find interesting. And that's hard.