I'm Bekah. I'm one month away from graduating nursing school(what!). I've been where you are now. As I'm closing in on graduation, I've been reflecting over the past four years of my life, the good, the bad, and the gross. No matter what people say, nursing school is hard. But it changes you, whether you're ready for it or not. I wasn't. I had no idea what I was walking into. You have more classes and clinicals ahead of you and so I want to share 10 things I have learned as a nursing student:
1. You will find you are tougher than you think. You will find, like I did, that you can do anything with gloves on and breathing through your nose. You will deal with every bodily fluid (I straight up got sprayed with urine in my first semester of clinicals) and you will get comfortable with being up close and personal with every person imaginable. You will learn to talk to sobbing patients or ask the right questions of someone contemplating ending their life. You will realize you at some point you aren't afraid of walking into a clinical rotation and that you can study for four nursing tests in one week. You will come to your breaking point, and then have to keep pushing. You will too often find resistance all around you but you will rely less on other's opinions and learn to speak truth to yourself. You will become a stronger person from nursing school.
2. Don't compare yourself to others. It might have been a competition to get in the nursing program, but now that you are in it's just you against you. Your nursing classmates are now your best friends. Studying late nights and early mornings, sharing quizlets, and talking through problems at clinicals, are all ways to success that are not found in textbooks, but in the person sitting next to you in your classroom. There will always be people getting better grades than you, finishing tests faster than you or remember more parts of an assessment then you do, but don't let it stick to you. There will always be people smarter, faster and better than you. That goes for all of life. Just do your absolute best and if you have to compete for something, compete against the person you were last week.
3. Your GPA will never be what you want it to be. I slowly watched mine decline over the semesters, no matter how hard I worked. You're going to have to get used to celebrating passing a test or a class. It happens to the best of us. I often cried to my parents, apologizing for not have the 4.0 GPA I had expected and my Dad kindly reminded me that D = degrees (to which I kindly reminded him in my case it had to be a C+). But the point stands, you won't always make the grades you want, but you will get that degree. Work your hardest and find better ways to study with each hurdle. You'll be just fine.
4. If you don't start talking dirty, you'll at least think it all the time. If you can tell gross body stories at the dinner table, you're on the right track. My family hates it, but I could talk about the packing wounds all night. You'll find yourself cracking inappropriate jokes about body parts with your nursing friends, and then be shocked at who you've become. You will have many moments when you realize you the conversation you're having in public is super inappropriate to everyone who is not in the medical field. Don't worry, we're all like that. You might not hear me talking dirty but that doesn't mean its not running through my mind. I'll laugh at your jokes.
5. Your non-nursing friends will not understand. They will not understand how hard nursing tests are or that staying in the nursing program is just as hard or harder than getting in and that every test could potentially flunk you out of the program. They don't understand the challenge of adjusting to a professional career at the age of 18 and the emotional insanity of bouncing between adult career and "normal" college life while your friends complain about how long their online assignment is taking and go downtown twice a week when you can't even leave the library. They will not understand the emotional toll of pumping the chest of a lifeless body or holding the hands of family members as they watch their husband and father take his last gasps of air.
6. You will have to say "no". A lot. Nursing school is demanding. It requires long days and too many chapters of reading in your textbooks. If the library had a shower, I could have lived there all four years. You'll start to consider yourself lucky if you can even cover all the material before the test. You will say no to parties, to friends, to family, to work, to self care and to sleep. It's never easy, but it won't be forever. Even in my last semester, I had to re-evaluate and say no to some of my best things in my life in order to stay 100% in the game. Its never easy, but victory always comes with sacrifice.
7. You will cry. So much. I didn't think I was a crier. But I sure am now. I cry at least 5 times a semester, sometimes 5 times a week. You will feel completely inadequate for this job, incapable of completing school, embarrassed at your mistakes, sorrowed at a missed opportunity. You will be spoken down to and unappreciated. You will be on the brink of failing nursing classes. You will push through test anxiety (I mean you kind of have to because there are a hundreds of them). You will try to explain yourself only to have people not take you seriously and laugh you off. You will have your weakest areas exposed. You will want to give up. You will want to take that sick baby home. You will want to stop that woman from dying in front of you. You will want the suffering and the pain to disappear. Bawl to your mom. Let the tears flow baby, let them flow. Write it out your experiences in a journal. Then wipe your tears. Get another latte. Stick on a sweat shirt and get back to work. Study one more chapter. Be thankful for every growing experience. You can do this!
8. Your perspective will grow. You will realize that life can be living hell for some people. You'll realize that some people have no idea whats going on in the scariest moments of their life and it's your job to educate them. You will encounter the saddest and most hopeless situations and you will have conversations with people you would never have talked to otherwise. You will realize that death is sometimes the best medicine for someone. I'm not one to get shocked by encounters, but I couldn't have anticipated the situations some people are in and the suffering so many people endure on a daily basis. It will shatter your world and then slowly you'll piece it back together with every thankful look and silent squeeze of a hand. It will make you a more compassionate and patient person. That's how it should be.
9. You will laugh. So hard. You will laugh as your colleagues tell their stories of the first time ever disimpacting someone's bowels or talk about their first interactions with a patient with schizophrenia. You will laugh till tears roll down your face when you recall the awkwardness of putting a condom catheter on a patient for the first time. You will laugh when your family yells at you for telling them gross stories. Laughter is something that carried me through my hard clinicals and long weeks. Let loose my friend; let the stress turn into belly shaking moments. We need all the stress release we can possibly get.
10. You will love nursing school and you will hate it. There will be days where you hate every single page of that 2,000 page medical surgical textbook. You will hate running off of 3-5 hours of sleep day after day for weeks on end. You will hate the hours of paperwork after a long clinical days and the countless policies and standards of nursing school that threaten your success. You will hate living off of granola bars and not being able to go to the beach when the weather gets warm. You will hate cleaning up explosive poop. But you will also love it. You will love playing with a little kid on a vent or laughing with a sweet dementia patient. You will love the first time you successfully put in an IV or confidently give report. You will love seeing a patient's eyes glisten when you educate them on their disease and how to get better. You will love unforgettable moments with your colleagues. You will love the accomplishment of going through mini med school and coming out the other side alive (barely). You will love growing into a person and profession you never even knew you could attain.
You can do it. Believe me, if I could do it, you can too. I know it'll be completely worth it in the end. Let me tell you, if you love what you do and work your hardest for it, you will be an amazing nurse, no matter what your GPA.
Love,
One exhausted and excited senior nursing student
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ReplyDeleteGreat job! You should be very proud!!
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