Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Hi, everyone. This is Dawn Klem, and you are on my podcast, Milkweed and monarchs. I thought I would take several of the first episodes to just kind of tell you who I am as a person who inspired me to do this podcast and why the name Milkweed and monarchs. So today, I'm just going to focus on myself. It's going to be all about me. The first thing that you should know, though, is I'm not a famous person.
[00:00:33] I'm not an actress, although I can be dramatic. I'm not a professional singer. I think you can kind of tell by my speaking voice I'm not a professional athlete. If you know me in person, you know, I'm really quite short.
[00:00:50] I'm not a politician. Yes, lord. Thank you.
[00:00:55] I'm just an everyday person, just an ordinary person. Like many of you out there, I was born and raised in southern Michigan.
[00:01:09] My father's family was from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and subsequently moved to northern Indiana. And my mom's family was from Ohio, northern Ohio. So southern Michigan was a good central location for access to both of their families.
[00:01:28] There were four people in our nuclear family. So it was my mom, my dad, my younger brother, and myself.
[00:01:38] I was born in October, so I started school when I was four years old, and I graduated from high school when I was 17.
[00:01:51] This is really important because I was young when I graduated, and I really had no understanding of what I wanted to do in my life.
[00:02:04] My dad and my mom both worked when I was growing up. My dad was a sales manager and operations manager for a local car dealership, and my mom was the business office manager of the local hospital.
[00:02:24] But they didn't save any money. I mean, it was at a time when you didn't think about how much the cost of college was, and they didn't really plan for me to go to college.
[00:02:36] My dad actually only went to school through the eigth grade, and my mom graduated from high school. So I don't think it was really in their mind to send me to college. And actually, it wasn't in my mind either. I had no understanding of what I wanted to do in any way.
[00:03:02] I remember I was getting ready to graduate, and I went to see my dad at work, and he called me into his office, and we were having a heart to heart talk about my future and that kind of thing. And he looked me directly in the eye and he said to me, no one helped me in my life, and I'm not going to be helping you.
[00:03:26] At the time, he told me that, honestly, I didn't think much of it. I mean, I wasn't upset by that conversation.
[00:03:35] In a way, I think I felt like it was a gift to me, that all of a sudden I was going to have freedom, freedom to figure out what I was going to do with my own life. I wasn't insulted, hurt, or anything by it. I was really more excited with that conversation.
[00:03:56] But nonetheless, I had no money saved up.
[00:04:00] I had worked all through high school. I was a regular babysitter for several families. I worked at a local pizzeria, and then I also worked at the college for banquets, setting up banquets and serving conventions kind of thing.
[00:04:22] But that was my spending money to get me through high school. And a lot of times I bought my own clothes. So there was no money saved up. There was a little, but not much. I was young when I graduated, so I figured, I'm just going to work for a year, and I'm going to save up more money, and I'll figure out what I'm going to do. So I worked at a local restaurant, and I worked that whole first year out of high school.
[00:04:50] Well, in the summer after that first year, my friends who had gone off to college came home for the summer, and one of my really good friends came to see me, and she wanted me to go to college with her. She had gone to Western Michigan University, and she thought that I could be her roommate and we could go back together. And by now, I had saved up some money, and I was kind of excited about it. My mom was over the moon about the idea of me going to college, and she offered to pay for the room and board as long as I paid for my classes. That sounded like a good thing for me, a good deal. So I decided to go off to Western Michigan University. So when I was 18, I went to college.
[00:05:42] When I got there, though, it was very clear that I had no idea of what I wanted to do. I still really did not know. I had no understanding. So I took all the general education requirements and I took a couple of business classes. Then this is when business programs were just starting to come out. I thought, oh, maybe I'll run my own business. I don't know where I came up with that because I am not business oriented in the least. I thought about going into education and being a math teacher. Math has always been a strong skill for me, but then I thought about how I was asked to tutor students in high school, and really, I don't have the patience to be a teacher at all. I found myself that if they didn't get it right away. I was annoyed. That's not a good thing for a teacher.
[00:06:44] So I went through the motions of going to school and classes, but I didn't really do very well that first year.
[00:06:55] That freedom and trying to figure yourself out was just overwhelming to me. I think I had some fun there, but I wasn't really serious about my education.
[00:07:08] So the end of that year came, and I went back home for the summer and still wondering, what the heck am I going to do? What am I going to do? This is not a good thing. So I worked in a restaurant for the summer, started saving up money, and I ended up going back to western Michigan in the fall. But I did not take any classes. I just went up there and became my good friend's roommate. And then I worked in a restaurant trying to make money.
[00:07:41] But I was upset with myself, really, because I knew I was not being productive and I had to do something.
[00:07:49] Well, I had a good friend up there who was in the ROTC program, and that was helping him get through college. So he encouraged me to go down and see a recruiter.
[00:08:00] And another girlfriend that I had was up there at the same time, and her brother had joined the Navy. So we decided to go see the Navy recruiter. That's the only reason we went to see the Navy recruiter, is because her brother was in the Navy. I don't know. It's crazy. But we went to see the Navy recruiter and I decided, yeah, I'm going to go in. I got to do something. And she said she was going to go in with me. So we were all set.
[00:08:34] We went, I think, in late fall, maybe November. And then you start the whole process. You have to have it physical. You have to get checked out to make sure that you're okay. And so I started that process, and in the meantime, she ended up backing out. She decided she didn't want to do it.
[00:08:59] The military has an education program, and they want you to choose a field of study that you're interested in so that when you get through with basic training, that you'll go to the school, and then that's what will be your job in the military while you're there. So when I had gone to the recruiter and looked at all the available options, there really was nothing that I wanted to do. Nothing. Zero.
[00:09:33] And so I said, I'm not going to sign up for a school. I'm just going to go in and I'll take my chances when I get to basic training or boot camp.
[00:09:45] So in January of 1978, I had just turned 19.
[00:09:56] I took my first plane ride from Detroit, Michigan, down to Orlando, Florida, to go to boot camp.
[00:10:07] That was like the biggest moment, probably one of the biggest moments in my life right there was going to boot camp. When I got off the plane, we all were loaded up onto a bus and then taken to our barracks.
[00:10:26] And the person who was in charge of us at that first stop had told me, you're going to be taking an aptitude test because we need you to get into an assigned program.
[00:10:41] So I ended up taking a test within the first week, and I scored high on that test. And they called me back into the office and they told me, you're going to be going to a hospital core school.
[00:10:57] You're going to get through boot camp, and then you're going to go through ten weeks of training for hospital core school, and you're going to work in a hospital. So basically, what I'm telling you is the Navy decided my career for me.
[00:11:12] I was a hospital corpsman for four years in the.
[00:11:19] Originally, I went to Great Lakes for hospital corps training, and that was in Joaquin, Illinois, Great lakes.
[00:11:28] And then I went to San Diego and worked at Balboa Naval Hospital. And then I was stationed overseas in Keplevic, Iceland, at the naval station there in the hospital.
[00:11:44] And then when I got out of the Navy, I went back to live in San Diego. Why? Not really, right?
[00:11:51] And my experience from being in the Navy allowed me to sit for the licensed practical exam, or LPN, or out there, it's called licensed vocational nurse, or LPN. And I sat for that test. And after having been in the military for four years working in the hospital, I passed that test right away, no problem. And so I got a job as an LPN, and it became pretty clear after a short period of time that this just wasn't going to be enough for me. So I ended up going back to nursing school. I got my associate degree, subsequently my bachelor's degree, and then my master's degree. I'm a clinical nurse specialist in adult health, and I spent most of my nursing career working in oncology.
[00:12:58] I was a bone marrow transplant coordinator, and my last job was as a brain tumor nurse navigator. I had other positions throughout my career, though. I worked in leadership. I worked in oncology leadership. I was a bedside nurse. And then I also worked in the other two positions that I told you about.
[00:13:24] So really what I'm telling you is, in summation, is that the military, the Navy is the one that decided what my career was going to be. I definitely did not make that choice on my own.
[00:13:43] So I am eternally grateful for the military and giving me the guidance that I need to move forward in my life. And there'll be other episodes where I'm going to tell you some stories about the military that are worth hearing. I think you'll get a kick out of them.
[00:14:06] But most recently, I worked at hospital here in Grand Rapids. I'm back in Grand Rapids where my dad came from, and that last job was as a brain tumor navigator. And I just wanted to put in a plug for nurse navigators here because I think that's one of the best roles that nursing has created in these years. Healthcare has changed so much over the course of the last 40 years, and to be able to be a navigator where you work, I worked directly with the oncologist, the neurosurgeon, the patient's primary care doctor. I knew the radiation oncologist.
[00:15:01] You're just able to navigate. So much for patients in a confusing health care system.
[00:15:11] They're all so big now, and it's just hard to know which way to turn. Even now that I'm retired, I struggle with the health care system myself, so just putting my plug in there, it was a great last job.
[00:15:30] But I am glad to be retired, and I just want to thank you all for joining me on my podcast, and I hope you'll stick around for the next episode. Thank you. Bye.
