The Story of How a Middle School Graduate Mom Became a University-Educated Nurse

When I was in elementary school, I was a responsible, class-representative type of person. I wasn't particularly good at studying, but I had an unusually strong obsession with status and prestige, so I took the middle school entrance exam and enrolled in the only combined junior and senior high school in the prefecture.

However, I focused on making my notebooks look beautiful instead of even glancing at the workbooks distributed during spring break, so I failed spectacularly on the very first test after entering middle school.

Perhaps because it was a combined junior and senior high school, or maybe due to its pride as a preparatory school, my alma mater had a system where the amount of homework and study methods were strictly defined, leaving no room for flexibility.

I have a personality where I get furious if someone else takes the lead, so I gradually stopped going to school.

I was a truant student like that, but I fully enjoyed the benefits of the combined junior and senior high school system and managed to become a high school student just by breathing.

During my first health checkup as a high school student, I was told I had urinary protein, and I ended up having needles stuck into my kidneys for tests, being hospitalized to adjust my medication, and all that jazz.

The test results revealed that I had an intractable disease called SLE, and I still visit the university hospital every month.

The term 'JK' (high school girl) sounded lovely, so I attended for about a year, but because I was frequently hospitalized, I didn't really fit in with my class. I experienced that phenomenon where you want to go to work after a long weekend, and I quit school at the beginning of my second year.

After that, since I was thinking about going on to higher education, I added credits from a correspondence high school to the credits I already had, leaving only one subject left, and then I took the high school equivalency exam and got my high school graduation qualification at lightning speed.

When I started attending correspondence high school and was busy going out at night almost every day, I found my husband. I have a bossy personality that would surprise even a stereotypical Kyushu man, and I decided the day I met him that I would make him my lifelong partner. He didn't seem very interested in me, but I succeeded in dulling his judgment with my persistence and overwhelming self-confidence, and we got married.

My daughter was born just before I turned 18, and when she was six months old, I headed to the Hello Work employment office for the first time to get a job.

During the six months since my daughter was born, I had obtained a driver's license and a medical office work qualification, so I thought I was an invincible king, but reality was not like that. The man at Hello Work told me, 'There is no company that will hire a young person who has never worked and has such a small child,' 'A medical office work qualification is meaningless without experience,' and 'A full-time position is impossible. You only have part-time jobs.' I swore in my heart that I would definitely earn more than that man.

Having added a little spice of anger to my life, I used my sense of smell, which was as good as a pig finding truffles, and my talent for internet surfing to track down a public nursing vocational school that I could attend for less than 10,000 yen a month.

Since the entrance exam for the budget nursing school was two months away, I gathered textbooks for the exam subjects that very day, carried my sleeping daughter on my back, and started studying for the exam.

The exam consisted of three subjects, all covering first-year high school material, so I managed to pass by the skin of my teeth. After enrolling, the 'if you want to learn, learn, otherwise I don't care!' freestyle fit me like Cinderella's slipper.

Since I originally loved making things, I loved writing nursing records, and since I'm motivated when I'm not forced to study, I ran through the tests and clinical practice without any trouble and graduated at the top of my class.

After graduating, I became interested in working as a university faculty member and doing research, so I decided to go to graduate school.

However, I only had a vocational school diploma, so I needed to either get a university degree or take exams at the National Institution for Academic Degrees and Quality Enhancement of Higher Education. I searched for the most cost-effective option and obtained my university degree by working to gain clinical experience while collecting credits at the Open University of Japan and taking tests at the National Institution for Academic Degrees.

I introduce the detailed method in another article.

Currently, I am working as an operating room nurse while also being a graduate student. I plan to earn my doctorate and pursue a career as a university faculty member.