Responsibility

For the first time I'm going into a field where it really actually matters how badly I mess up at my job. In the grand scheme of things the likelihood that my forgetting you said no lettuce on your taco will have serious ramifications are pretty small. But missing something when I'm doing an examination on someone before we get them to the hospital or giving them too many doses of a medication, that's serious. This time it's literally a matter of life and death that I do things right. Thankfully I'm able to forget that most of the time and just focus on what I need to do. See problem, fix problem, simple. If you concentrate hard enough on what you're doing you can forget all the things that can possibly go wrong on your watch and you always have the "do no further harm" thing floating over your head all the time. All the things I have to learn reach far beyond just remembering them for the next test like I can with every other class I've taken. After all, by and large the things I had to learn in school never had any practical application whatsoever. Ever. I do not use trigonometry in my daily life. Never will. But all these things I'm learning in school, it's actually relevant! Important even! This is a new and fascinating concept and totally awesome. I actually love what I'm doing and love the job I can have when I'm done. I look forward to going to school and not only that but I'm actually doing well in school. This is totally foreign territory here. Even when I was studying English I liked it a lot, but it didn't excite me like being an EMT does. Plus editors don't get to ride in fire trucks and how many people can say that doesn't fulfill every childhood dream? Plus no matter how long my shift is and how tired I am and how many awful things happened I can know I did something really important for someone. I can directly see that I made a difference and that's pretty cool. Of course I'm still a little worried that I won't know enough or I'll completely freeze one day in the field and my partner will have to save me, but hopefully I'll be all right. I've got the lights and sirens to make me happy if nothing else.