Hey friends, it’s Lizzie! There’s a chapter of my story I don’t talk about much online, but it quietly shaped almost everything else you know me for now. Before the kickboxing, before this blog, before any of it — I spent three years working in the emergency room.
Where It Actually Started
I graduated at the top of my nursing class. On paper, I was exactly the student who was supposed to sail through boards and start working as an RN within months. That’s not what happened. I failed my boards five times. I’m not going to pretend that number doesn’t sting a little to even type out, but it’s the truth, and it’s part of the story. Instead of the RN path I’d planned on, I went to work as a nurse tech in the emergency room — hands-on, in the middle of it, just without the letters after my name I’d worked so hard for.
Three Years, Through Everything
I worked in the ER pre-COVID, all the way through COVID, and into whatever healthcare looks like now on the other side of it. That’s a strange stretch of years to have lived through in that specific environment. I watched the entire rhythm of the job shift more than once, under more pressure than most jobs ever ask of the people doing them, and none of those shifts made the work easier.
The COVID Chapter, Specifically
I don’t need to explain to anyone who lived through it what that stretch was like inside a hospital. What I’ll say is that I watched “hard” get redefined more than once during those years — the protective gear, the constant uncertainty, the sheer volume of it, and then the slow, strange shift back to whatever normal was supposed to look like afterward. Working through all three chapters of that, back to back, without a real reset in between any of them, is its own kind of exhausting that’s hard to explain to someone who wasn’t there.
What Actually Wore Me Down
It wasn’t the hard medical moments — honestly, I could handle those. What wore me down was quieter than that: long hours stacking on top of each other with barely enough recovery in between, and a general lack of humanity I started noticing more and more, both in the system itself and in how some people treated the staff trying to help them.
The ER Isn’t Urgent Care
Here’s something most people outside healthcare don’t realize: the emergency room sees everything, including things that have nothing to do with an actual emergency. I lost count of visits for things like a broken nail — genuinely sick and scared people waiting in the same room while someone treated the ER like a walk-in clinic. And a lot of those visitors weren’t kind about the wait either. You’d think fear would make people gentler with each other in a place like that. Sometimes it did. A lot of the time, it didn’t.
Choosing to Leave
Eventually I made the decision to leave, and it wasn’t one dramatic moment — it was more like a slow accumulation of shifts that all started to feel the same, until one day I was honest with myself about how much of me the job was taking that I wasn’t getting back. Leaving didn’t feel like giving up. It felt like finally admitting that a job can be meaningful and still not be sustainable for you specifically.
What’s Filled That Space Since
What I didn’t expect was how much room that decision would open up. I found real purpose in building this space instead — sharing my life, actually being present for friends and family instead of missing things for a shift schedule, having energy left at the end of a day instead of spending all of it before I even got home. It’s a completely different kind of full. But it’s real, and it’s mine.
If You’re in the Middle of Your Own Version of This
If any part of this sounds familiar — if you’re in a job that looked right on paper but is quietly costing you more than it’s giving back — I see you. You don’t need a five-year plan to leave. You just need to be honest with yourself about what you’re actually getting back for what you’re giving.
What I Actually Miss
Being honest, because leaving something isn’t the same as thinking it was all bad. There’s a clarity to that kind of work that’s hard to replicate — you knew what the day required and you knew when you’d done it. That’s genuinely rarer than it sounds.
The people, too. There’s a particular closeness that comes from doing hard things alongside the same team, and that doesn’t transfer easily to work you do alone.
If You’re Thinking About Leaving Something
Not advice, just what I’d say to a friend. Leaving well takes longer than leaving fast, and the runway you build before you go is what determines whether the next thing gets a fair chance or gets made under pressure.
And the question worth sitting with isn’t “am I unhappy” — most people are unhappy somewhere. It’s whether the thing making you unhappy is fixable inside the job or built into it. Those have completely different answers.
Your Questions, Answered
Do you regret becoming a nurse tech instead of an RN? Honestly, no. It gave me real, hands-on ER experience I wouldn’t trade, even though the path there wasn’t the one I originally planned.
What would you tell someone who’s failed their boards or a big exam like that? That one exam, or five, doesn’t define your competence or your worth. I know that firsthand.
Do you miss anything about working in the ER? The people I worked alongside, genuinely. Not much else, if I’m honest.
Now tell me, friends: has your life taken a turn you didn’t plan for, that ended up giving you something you needed anyway? Drop it in the comments — I read every one. Come find me on Instagram @sealillly. Love you, mean it. 💛
