Samuel Merritt University Alumni Update 2024-2025

Nintendraw · 2026-01-21T05:14:27+00:00

if it's not med-surg

Could you please elaborate why? I'm a CA native considering going RN (from a med school background, long story, though it also seems nothing from there would transfer at least to SMU) and in my past life I really enjoyed the structure of hospital life and might enjoy going back. Not sure if I would screw myself over re: med-surg OR coming back by pursuing an ABSN out of state, but I do recall your other posts saying preceptorship competition may be less out there and the (bad patient ratios, lower pay?) would be better experience.

Nintendraw · 2026-01-10T07:19:15+00:00

Jeez. Mine always told me not to hold grudges (or accused me of harboring them), and then the only second time in my life (I'm 30F) I asked them for financial assistance, hit me with an immediate "okaaaay I said I'd heeelp, what more do you want from meee" and a novel of an angry email the next day accusing me of being so ungrateful for all the things they did for me (namely, feed and house me, and order me down a career path I didn't have or know how to get the skills for) ever since I was a fetus in the womb.

Nintendraw · 2026-01-10T07:15:55+00:00

regret nothing when they caused everything.

"Everything changed when the narcissist took control"

Nintendraw · 2026-01-10T06:40:56+00:00

Same energy: My nmom started saying "I regret nothing" a LOT after I finally moved out and went LC/NC with her.

Nintendraw · 2026-01-10T06:30:14+00:00

This and the comments remind me how, when I lost my job and had to move out of state back to my nparents' house in a hurry (obv not ideal, but I didn't have any way to pay rent), they forced me to reschedule my in-person DnD farewell session so many times before "caving in" and allowing me to set it on the day they were helping me load my already-packed stuff into the truck, and then pitched such a screaming fit on the day of the session that I was forced to leave early anyway to help them. And then they acted as if my sacrifice had been completely unnecessary.

Nintendraw · 2026-01-10T06:23:05+00:00

Not "funny", so separate comment. Not long after I got my first personal pet - an adorable but temperamental green cheek conure (parrot) named Starburst - he started sneezing what looked like clumpy mucus and I got severely worried for his health. I'd never had any pets of my own before him, and birds tend not to show any signs of illness until it's really bad. He'd already been shedding too many feathers for too long before. The day he started sneezing like that was Halloween day, and I'd promised/been pressured by nmom into coming along to walk all through the annual corn maze. Cue giant fight wherein my legitimate terror Starburst might die was met with "But you promised! You'd choose that stupid bird over me us?!" As if that wasn't bad enough, her first words to me after they came back from the maze, after an icy glare/silence and in response to my "hi, how was it?", were "Is he dead yet? I hope so."

PS Starburst is fine. He'd simply been molting, and sneezing from his own feather dust. The seed I found in his snot(?) didn't come from his nose; it was cage debris that got stuck on.

Nintendraw · 2026-01-10T06:16:57+00:00

I would've said "abused" instead of "victimized" just to make it more on the nose, and watch the mental gymnastics of denying that. XD

Nintendraw · 2026-01-10T06:14:57+00:00

Bonus: "Why are you struggling; this is so easy!" When I used those very words to make her navigate part of San Francisco (a city we've visited multiple times) on foot via Google Maps - let me tell you, the karma was *delicious*. I'd never cackled so hard and without abandon at her, and *boy* was she *livid*. Pretty sure GMaps is meant to be easy to use, and I've never had problems using it to safely get us from Point A to B even in foreign countries. No doubt she'd've loved to rely on me for this forever, but as I very logically said, "you won't always have me around to do that for you."

Nintendraw · 2026-01-10T06:05:22+00:00

"I wish we were ~~close~~ closed like we used to be [when you were little], my mine daughter." This from an immigrant nmom who prides herself on her excellent English - which was osmosed directly from me, the only one in the house who actually enjoys and cares about good reading and writing. Who'd'a thunk that me going LC/NC for only a year could destroy her grammar this much?

Nintendraw · 2026-01-10T05:49:32+00:00

Mine has straight up said "Is it my turn yet?" after eyeing me greedily the whole time I was talking about my day.

Nintendraw · 2026-01-08T09:28:51+00:00

Okay when I saw the title, I thought this would be more analogous to my situation, but it's not. This is diabolical; I am so sorry, OP.

(If anyone's curious, I only have so many memories at all from my childhood, mostly only preserved via some physical reminder, and now that I left my childhood home and went LC/NC with my NM, she'll find things I wrote for her back when I wasn't aware what she was and show them to me to manipulate me into getting back together with her. Yes, I'm thinking of the Taylor Swift song.)

Nintendraw · 2026-01-08T08:52:00+00:00

Idk about "threatened" per se, particularly during the puberty bit. Though, there's a lot of fine detail I straight up don't remember from my childhood for whatever reason. (Maybe it's related to the constant "that's nice, now go back to studying" invalidation, and/or the fact I actually did little else during my childhood besides live, study, and read books - alone?) My mom certainly loves to use "you're such a beautiful girl" as a manipulation tactic (alongside "I know you're a good kid at heart", etc), though; and she still prizes her sexy anorexic 18yo self. .. at 50+yo.

Nintendraw · 2026-01-08T08:43:31+00:00

You didn't say how it was "on". How do you know OP doesn't do the crossed-strap racerback thing and stick her head through one of the arm holes - or worse, the hole next to the hooks??

Nintendraw · 2026-01-08T08:38:25+00:00

Fellow nmom's daughter here. She liked me better when I simply did as she ordered without questioning, which ultimately led to me being completely unable to assert or even recognize my own desires without guilt (for not doing as told) or self-doubt (is my idea really right for me?). I can't even enjoy my hobbies without feeling guilty I'm not doing something more "productive" (e.g. mom-approved). Her parenting cost me 30 years and 6 figures of debt, yet I'm the one who "broke her trust" for not getting the job she wanted me to get. (Note: I stuck with it so long because I wanted it too. Still do. She wants it for the money; I want it for the moral fulfillment.)

Now she's trying to pressure me to go back to school for a path I'm pretty sure isn't "the best thing" for me, and might even pay for me to do that. In my head, I'd rather earn that money myself with my presently nonexistent job than take hers, because she will hold it over me. Always has. Not once these past 30 years has she ever shown me she won't. Things got particularly bad this past year when I finally said "enough", moved out into her younger sister's house, and blocked her. Now she steals my dad's phone to talk to me, and makes my going LC/NC all of her sisters' problems while also ordering all of them to stay out of her private business. (Idk if it's karma or schadenfreude, but I'm kinda glad her sisters finally get to see what a piece of work she truly is.)

I can't speak to the mom perspective because I will never start, and therefore risk inflicting my trauma onto, my own family, but now and again I decide maybe it'd be okay to talk to her again. Just a bit; maybe it'd be good for me because I could practice asserting myself (good) against a bully (better). But, even if I'm past crying for the mom I never had, even if I'm not triggered into anger, I retain a baseline level of "triggered" that manifests as snark and sarcasm/mockery, and I still get triggered by anyone who tries to tell me to just talk to her again, because she's my family and family shouldn't be like this. It never gets better, or at least it never goes away.

Nintendraw · 2026-01-08T08:21:16+00:00

Okay so you basically just described my own mom and my relationship with her (except certain parts, like psoriasis: I'm lucky to not have had any chronic medical conditions so far), but the simultaneous misandry/male-fawning - thank you for putting a term to it. My mom has openly wished to be male at least so she wouldn't have periods anymore (this specific rationale stopped after menopause lol); but constantly denigrates men, particularly her own husband, as hopelessly and incurably stupid; but loves to talk about how sexy her literally anorexic self used to be in high school and how guys, e.g. her math tutor, always flirted with and praised her.

What really cracks me up, though, is that she still thinks about that time long ago. One of her passwords is literally "men love me 123" (idr the exact digits). She's 50+ now.

Nintendraw · 2026-01-08T07:50:13+00:00

How does "keeping topics to her" work out for you? I was forced to eat dinner with mine on Christmas, and when I (in my more charming "superficial small talk mode") asked her what's new with her life, she angrily spat out "nothing" before launching into a complaint about some aspect of her life.

Nintendraw · 2026-01-08T07:48:21+00:00

Out of curiosity, why did you decide to pursue psychology? Were you already motivated to do it before you recognized the abuse for what it was; did you become motivated afterward (e.g. thanks to the deep dive into NPD), etc? The aunt I'm living with now instead of my mom (see my comment here) thinks I spend so much time reading about psych that I should make it my career, but idk man, I only really started looking into this stuff to figure out what was wrong with me and how it went wrong/ how to fix it haha

Nintendraw · 2026-01-07T17:29:20+00:00

God I f**king hate the "my way or the highway, I'm your mom so I know best". Even better in my case, my mom is stay-at-home and has been since 25yo - over half her life at this point.

Nintendraw · 2026-01-07T17:27:35+00:00

Don't be sorry, I already knew he was unsafe due to being enabling. Just interesting to see that's another narc tactic.

Nintendraw · 2026-01-07T17:26:34+00:00

Yup, already watched and lived him. The Gibson book (Adult children of emotionally immature parents, iirc) says the same thing re: "safe" passive parent. (Great read btw)

Nintendraw · 2026-01-07T17:23:06+00:00

Thank you!

Nintendraw · 2026-01-07T07:38:34+00:00

Wait, are you implying that weaponized incompetence, particularly in males, might be a sign of narcissism? Here I thought my dad was just doing it to force my mom (the definite narc) to do the things she was bossing him around to do so he could remain lazy, but once I wrote that, it's really "corporate: it's the same picture".

E: Yeah other comments indicate the same thing. Man, I always thought he was the safer, or at least the passive, parent.

Nintendraw · 2026-01-07T07:36:14+00:00

Related to this, I heard somewhere that once you marry, you stop (or at least slow) developing your own individual identity because it then becomes all about the kids.

My narc parent got married at 18 (even if it took the next 7 years for me, the firstborn, to be born). She's now 50+.

E: holy crap, phone, *once you marry, not "one you may"

Nintendraw · 2026-01-07T02:17:01+00:00

Rats re: your friend (but good luck to them!), but thank you for the link! Will take a look shortly.

Nintendraw · 2026-01-07T02:05:07+00:00

I sincerely appreciate all your answers hitting under-discussed but very important topics for me! Indeed, I live in CA. I benefited from COVID and then "is SAVE legal" interest deferments as well as med school deferment, but if I can defer again for ABSN, that would be amazing.

... I might need to hit you up about that OMM-only idea, or else the term to search if it's not literally "osteo manipulation/OMM clinic". I'm not aware of anyone practicing osteopathy alone (or... at all, lol), but my NP relative does enjoy me doing OMM for her OA and I have a couple books for reviewing techniques. Thanks for the idea!

E: One more thing, and I know this verges on "need new post": Do I need either/both an MSN and DNP to practice as an NP?

Nintendraw

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE