Thank You For Your Interest...

...but we have selected another candidate who best meets our current needs at this time.

...but the position you applied for has already been filled.

...but we have identified candidates who more closely match the requirements of the position.


I cannot tell you how many of these emails I have received over the past three to four months while I have been searching desperately for a nursing job. They try to put it nicely or word it in a way that isn't quite so direct, but its hard not to read between the lines and see: you aren't good enough.

If I'm being brutally honest, it has not been easy getting rejected time and time again for one nursing job after the other. I did well in school. I not only excelled academically, but I was involved in various extra-curricular activities and leadership roles. To top it off, I have a degree in the health care field, getting a job was going to be easy or so I was told. I have learned, along with a lot of my fellow nursing school graduates, this is often not the case. Hospitals want someone who has experience, someone who they won't have to spend so much time and money orienting, someone who is less likely to burn out than a new grad just getting into their career.

To them, I am a huge risk. I have little actual nursing experience and therefore I am more of a liability than an asset. However, I will never make that transition unless someone, anyone gives me a chance. I am still in the painful process of finding that someone, that one organization, that is willing to take me on. I've filled out countless online applications, scoured the web looking for nearby hospitals with openings, called numerous Human Resource Departments, gone to job fairs and several interviews, but so far its all just ended in disappointment.

After a while, it really starts to get to your psyche. I mean for a while I was getting four to five rejection emails a week saying 'thanks, but no thanks'. Its hard to see that pop up in your inbox almost daily and consequently feel your self-esteem slowly deflate.

Now, I do not say all of this so that you all can throw me a pity party where we all sit around and talk about 'poor Bethanie', because really, honestly, in the big scheme of things, my problems are minuscule compared to what some people are going through. I still, thanks to the generosity of others, have a place to live and food to eat, I have a car, and I even have a job interview tomorrow. So life really isn't that bad. In fact, life is wonderful and beautiful, no matter how frustrating this phase of it is at the moment.  

As far as the crushing blows to my self-esteem, I even came up with a solution for that. I decided to make myself complete #6 - make a list of 25 things I like about myself. I honestly have been dreading this list item since I wrote it down. Our society as a whole is more comfortable pointing out the negative things we see. We look at something beautiful and manage to find the one error and blow it up and make it the focus. We find it much more difficult to find the positive in others and especially ourselves. And I am by no means exempt from this epidemic of negativity, but I am fighting back. I wrote down on paper twenty five things that I like about myself - ranging from physical to mental to spiritual and everything in between. Now, I am not that self-absorbed or brave enough to post that list here, but rest assured it does exist. In place of the list, I'll leave this quote in hopes that maybe it might inspire you to find the good in yourself as well, no matter what everyone else is telling you.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. 

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. 

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. 

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be? 

You are a child of God. 

Your playing small does not serve the world. 

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that

other people won't feel insecure around you. 

We are all meant to shine, as children do. 

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. 

And as we let our own light shine,

we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. 

As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.

~Marianne Williamson