As Travel Nursing has grown in popularity, the ways of handling a thirteen-week posting to a new city have grown in range and variety. Fifteen years ago, the ways in which Travel Nurses conducted themselves when not at work ranged from those who stayed in their apartment watching television, and playing video games to those who tried to find a party every single night. But there were only a few options in between.
Now a new approach is catching on, and having an unexpected pronounced positive side-effect: trying to pick up on as much of that city’s culture as one can, so that by the end of the term, one feels confident that one has taken its measure. This “Learning the Culture” is being approached as if it were a new game—as new as geocaching. One of the reasons for its surprising growth and appeal is that it is still young enough for it to not have any hard and fast rules. One is free to try almost anything. It demands creativity, and its success is mainly self-graded.
The way it is practiced varies considerably. It begins when one accepts a Travel Nurse assignment to a particular city, and asks oneself, “In thirteen weeks, how can I best learn the ins and outs of this place?” Those who have done this in past positions usually carry over the strategies and tricks that previously proved successful, but that can’t always be done. Not every aspect of a past city is present in the new assignment.
Some of our correspondents have shared information about how they seek to learn about a new city’s culture during their time off work:
Join a reading group. To find one, ask at the library. As local people discuss a book, local attitudes are on display. A by-product of this is that you can acquire some neutral perspective on your own attitudes, which will also be on display.
Sit in on a trial. See what courts are located in the city. Make a list of upcoming trials at which the public is not barred. Choose one, and attend a few sessions—not necessarily consecutively. Watch the judge, the attorneys, the defendant, the jury, and other members of the audience.
Investigate the local government, the legislative bodies and the planning departments. Go to the City Hall and collect as many agendas as you can. Keep an ear out and an eye open for points of controversy. Not only are such meetings entertaining, but they indicate moments of possible sudden change.
Take an art class or, better, a craft class; crafts seem to draw a more-diverse audience. The subject may be one with which you are already very good, so that you can gauge regional variations in style and values, or one you know little about, so that you come away broadened. Phone the high schools and community colleges; ask for suggestions and leads to other people to ask.
Volunteer to visit the elderly; these people have seen it all during their long life, and they are glad to tell you what they think and feel. The elderly sometimes feel that by the time they’ve learned how to live, they no longer have the physical capability; consequently they’re happy to pass on their accumulated wisdom to someone who may act as their proxy. But don’t press them; stay attentive but patient, and what they wind up telling you may come as a surprise.
Go to group exercise functions, even if you don’t need exercise, because people let their guard down when exercising and may reveal things they would never bring up in other settings. A variant on this is to take a martial arts class. Another is to enter an athletic contest—one correspondent said, “I try to find an event in which people get together to walk for a charitable cause.”
Attend, or take part in, contests and performances. Ever taken part in an amateur theatrical? If you’re shy, there are usually parts with only a few lines. Or you could help paint sets, run the lights, take tickets, or sew costumes. Listen to the chatter as a way of taking the activity’s pulse.
Go to church. If you’re flexible, go to different churches. Try a synagogue. Try a mosque. One correspondent wrote that she goes to a different church each Sunday, and always stands around afterwards to chit-chat with the parishioners. Investigate what other programs the church sponsors that you might attend.
Observe and take part in a wide variety of recreational activities. Take in musical performances. Go to a bowling alley and a billiard parlor. Go to a rink. Attend lectures. Take lessons in a new form of dance. Be creative in your investigation.
This is just a brief sample of the ways in which Travel Nurses are trying to come to terms with the culture of the city to which they are assigned, but it indicates the broad range of possibilities.
It’s important to work at this, to not treat it too casually. If you think you’d like to try it, do it full-speed-ahead. Before you go to the new city, see what you can learn about it and its activities from your local library and on the web. Don’t give yourself more than a week to assemble a schedule, complete with back-ups for cancellations. As soon as you arrive there, begin asking questions about activities you can take part in. Ask at the Y, the local newspaper office, the police station; people in these places know things the average person doesn't.
As soon as you can, make a schedule. You can modify it, but no matter how exhausted you are, do your best to stick to it. On balance, it provides more energy than it requires.
It might seem that you’d never have enough time to do any of this, and yet those who have engaged in it find it very helpful with their work. It gives them perspective, and lets them view the stress and occasional travail of their work in a broader context.
They say that all politics is local; maybe that’s its problem. Travel nurses who follow this culture-learning activity sometimes reap an unexpected benefit: they become, not experts, exactly, but “specialists” in comparative culture—something of which we could use more. Unexpected, because they are just trying to learn the culture of City A, and then, on their next assignment, City B, and then City C. But they make connections. They make comparisons. They begin to see that some things work better than others. They develop an elevated viewpoint. They become pundits. They may say such things as, “The excessive localization of politics is its doom.”
One correspondent even wrote that after doing this in her last four assignments, she now considers it her most important activity, and her Travel Nurse assignments are merely a means to this end.
