SpiritlyANurse

Hi. Today, I want to share a story of my job transitions and the reason why I decided not to become a full time nurse.

First, I appreciate the fact that I even have this option to decide because I know most people are struggling financially due to mass layoffs and unemployment due to today’s job market.

A Little Background: Nursing School and the NCLEX

I’d like to give some background about me: I graduated December 2024, but I had the privilege to start working as a nurse in October 2024.

I was lucky with my program in a way which allowed me to test for the NCLEX [nursing license exam] as soon as the nursing prerequisites were completed.

The Job Hunt: Applications and an Excel Sheet to Track My Progress

It was such a relief for me because I passed the exam with my first try.

I immediately started applying for jobs once my nursing license processed – It took me around 80 applications and 3 months before I landed my first nursing job.

I even made an excel sheet to keep track of all the jobs that I applied for:

I know the image and words are small but I meant to just show you an example of the lengths I took while applying for my job. Unfortunately, I couldn’t fit all the terms onto that image because I applied for too many!

Please comment down below to guess which specialty I landed in or how many applications it took for you to land your first job-I’m curious to know what you guys think!

Landing My First Nursing Job (Part-Time/Per-Diem)

Enough side track, my first job was not full time.

I was placed as a per diem/part time nurse. However, I was extremely grateful and happy for this opportunity because the facility rarely hired new graduates.

Around 6 months in, my co-worker referred me to another facility and I was placed in a per diem status.

This is where it gets a little complicated:

A Second Opportunity and Changing Management

Let’s call this place Job B.

This place was in the process of changing management because the owner of this facility was ready to retire.

I rarely came in to work [because there were no work], but the administrator of the facility appreciated my work ethics when there were patients and encouraged me to ask our boss for full time.

At that time, I held that option off because of various reasons.

Holding Off on Full-Time (And Why)

Work started to pick up for me at my first job.

I had also made plans for a one month vacation to visit my parents in Taiwan in November 2025 – It wasn’t an option for me to become full-time at a place where I would go to vacation shortly after.

Finally, I had the intention to quit my first job after completing my whole year.

However, before leaving to my vacation, I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t unemployed after I come back from my trip.

I asked Job B’s boss near the end of October 2025 for a full-time position and gave her my expected start date.

She told me that she would relay the status change to the new management and we formed an agreement to start part time first then full time in January 2026, because there wasn’t really much to do during the transitioning phase of the management.

The Twist That I Never Would Have Imagined (At least immediately After Vacation)

After my vacation, I found out that the administrator, despite the change in management, did not want to work at Job B anymore and went to work at his previous center [Job C].

In the second week of December 2025, he contacted me to work at Job C, and I agreed to it.

That was how I established another connection with the management who offered me to work full time.

A Choice I didn’t Expect to Make

This was a difficult decision for me because I wanted to prioritize my learning and growth in the nursing field, but I also wanted to save up to buy a house, have a stable schedule, and not be so burnt out. So it was kind of like:

Which one would you guys have chose?

I ended up choosing option 2 and sacrificed some benefits such as health insurance, PTO, 401k, etc.

Why I Chose Growth Over Stability

Some people might think that I am just being naive…but I strongly believe that I would benefit in the long-run if I focused on enhancing my nursing skills at two different facilities.

I also believe that having more exposure to patients’ reasons of encounter and employee work habits would develop a vast knowledge of scenarios and skill application. [Wow, I did not mean to sound like a job application summary.]

Anyways, that sums up my reason as to why I chose to decline the full-time offers for Job B and Job C.

Life Now: Still Processing, Busy, But Grateful

So now…I am working two part time jobs and I sometimes work 6 days a week. It’s definitely tiring, but extremely fulfilling.

Thank you for reading – Everything happened very recently and honestly I am still in processing mode, so I am very glad I could share what’s on my mind.

I know the whole story sounds extremely confusing! Please let me know if there is anything you would like me to clarify, elaborate on, or talk about specifically.