> Jane wonders if she should have pursued her original idea of becoming a registered nurse or a doctor. "I had that choice when my hospital offered me the tuition plan," she admits. "All I could think about was the difficulty of med school and the time it would take to get a degree. Given the same choice, I might have decided differently. I didn't know HMOs were about to change everything."
Nevertheless, Jane draws substantial satisfactions from the career she chose. "The doctors and nurses are treating diseases. I'm treating people, helping them come through their hospital experience better equipped to deal with their lives," she says proudly. "I also get to see a significant number of patients after they are discharged. I am very gratified to watch them recover and flourish because of our efforts."
Jane admits that the stresses of her job sometimes get to her. "I am not always able to help," she admits, "sometimes because we don't have the resources the patient needs and sometimes because the patient refuses assistance. Also, because I see an almost endless stream of patients, I sometimes feel as though I'm not having any effect. At times like these, I need to remember my success stories."
2. Bob Matthews is a probation officer for the city of Philadelphia. "My background is in social work," he explains, "and I got into this more because I thought I could help people than because I wanted to enforce the law." He supervises individuals who have been given probation instead of a sentence for their criminal activities; most of his clients are first offenders as adults (though many have juvenile records), and many were convicted of petty crimes.
"I decided to enter this field partly because I met a man whose probation required him to work with my neighborhood community center," Bob explains. "I got to know him a little
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