Balancing It All
By Gretchen Olson, Senior Nursing Student
My name is Gretchen Olson and I am a senior nursing student at Crown College. I am from Coon Rapids, Minnesota. I transferred to Crown in spring of 2007, so I have been here for four semesters.
I love soccer. The thing that I love most about soccer is the competition. I love competing and playing a sport that I enjoy. I also like being on a team that works together for the same goal. The girls on the team are awesome and the relationships that we are building are great. I enjoy the opportunity soccer provides me to stay fit. I love playing soccer outside each day and the stress relief it brings to my life.
I also love nursing. For as long as I can remember I wanted a career in which I could help others. I found nursing and knew it was the right profession for me. I want to be a nurse so I can be there for others and take care of them. I enjoy that the nursing field is always evolving and changing for the better. I love that I get to be an advocate for others and make a positive change in people’s lives.
So how can I achieve a balance between these things I love and want to invest so much in? Before I decided to take on both soccer and nursing, I made sure to pray about it and get the support of my family and the Nursing Department. I also talked with my coach to let him know that my priority was nursing and worked through a few conflicts with clinicals and soccer practice. He was very willing to compromise to make everything work, which helped me not feel overwhelmed going into the school year. I knew at the start that I had the support of everyone involved this semester.
Organization has been the key to making everything work. I have a planner where everything is written down and I refer to that many times daily. So when I am at soccer I can totally focus on that and not think of homework or anything else. I make sure during the week to finish homework assignments so when I have games on the weekend I am not overwhelmed. I study ahead of time for tests and never save things for the last minute. Traveling for soccer is the hardest thing with school work. I try my best to have things completed before hand or I use the bus time to do homework. Staying disciplined to do all these things helps me balance nursing school and soccer.
Now add to this balance a growing love for mission work. I am the leader of the Haiti Missions trip this year, taking place in March 2009 over spring break. I went on this trip last year and fell in love with the people. There is such a need for change in Haiti. I am very excited to go back and have been planning and preparing for this trip since summer. While in Haiti we stay with the only nursing school there, located in Leagone. We work with the nursing students and build incredible relationships with them. Last year, we nursing students and the doctors collaborated to hold several clinicals in different towns for people needing medical care. The hospital in that area has been closed for a long time, so medical care is hard for them to obtain. We brought medications to give to the patients as the doctors prescribed them. We set up tables with coloring books, puppets, bubbles, and balloons for the kids there to play with. We visited many different hospitals and got a better idea of how their health care system works. At night we hung out with the nursing students and worshipped with them.
The greatest thing that I took away from my Haiti missions experience was a changed heart and an overall different perspective on things. God opened my heart and eyes for the need of missions and I will forever have that passion in me. I am still talking to the friends that I made while I was there and we have created an everlasting bond.
In summary, the reason why I am able to balance nursing, soccer, and being a missions leader is that God has been with me every step of the way. I know I could not possibly do all of this on my own and I thank God for being there every day. He has put a strong passion in my heart for all that I do and this makes me strive to give it my all in every aspect of my life. I am certain that having Him to turn to and trust in has made balancing my life much easier and more manageable.
