Academia vs. nursing...

I have been a little concerned occasionally when I hear someone who's been to nursing school or is a nurse themselves talking about older nurses eating their young, etc. That is part of the reason I left academic research --- because there was a whole lot of that.

But I was browsing around catching up on a few blogs I read sometimes and I found this post on the "Head Nurse" blogspot:

http://head-nurse.blogspot.com/2011/06/thank-god-im-nurse.html

It turns out she's got a unique perspective in that her whole family is entrenched in the academic world, while she's a nurse. My favorite quote from the blog entry:

"See, Dad was talking about academic politics and who gets what professorship and what one's ranking in the department was dependent on, and how that was affecting this, that, and the other thing. And I was sitting there, alternately casting my eyes Heavenward and thinking, "Y'know, if some jackass tried *that* shit around me, they'd never set foot in my unit again.""

I also enjoyed this comment made by an anonymous reader:

"Thanks to the nasty politics in academia, I made the transition from academician to nurse and haven't looked back. My former colleagues are still shocked about my decision (I get some version of the "how can you can go from thinking profound thoughts to wiping dirty butts?" question from them everytime). I try to be polite when I tell them it's better than believing that some minutae of lyric poetry is going to change the world and sucking up to some quack of a dean to keep your pathetic job of teaching 6 sections of composition day and night."

So someone else out there has successfully made the jump from academia into nursing and seems to be much happier with it. Looks like he/she was in literature before, where I was in science, but I'm sure a lot of the stupid politics and infighting are common to the two.

More confirmation that I'm headed in the right direction is always welcome...!