As part of my nursing requirements, I am required to take a philosophy class. Medical Ethics, to be specific. I'm taking it now, and I can hardly wait for it to be over. Not because of the prof, though I waffle almost daily on whether I like or dislike him. Overall, I think I can deal with him. It is coping with a class that necessarily deals so much in ethical dilemmas. People often rant about how people deny or are blind to the truth, but if half the stuff covered in this class is true, I can see why they do. To protect their sanity. I'm an optimist by nature, but this class is seriously depressing me, and realistically, even if I held all the answers to all of humanity's dilemmas... it wouldn't be enough, because I wouldn't be able to get enough people to cooperate enough to do what would need to be done.

I'm in training to be a nurse, and I fully expect to be one, by and by, but I this class has really driven home something that I always suspected - that I will always ALWAYS be an engineer, as well. There was a time, not too far in the past, where I idly wondered if The Nurse would ever overtake The Engineer. I now know it will not, and the degree to which that is true, and the force with which it hit me managed to astonish me, even though the fact wasn't really a surprise. To see a problem that I not only can't solve, but cannot even begin to address just kills me.