I am past the first month in nursing school. I have passed my nursing midterm with an A, and I'm thrilled about that! I am now midway through week five which means I am over halfway through the entire first term of the program. It feels like just yesterday that I was questioning whether or not I should even do this… it feels like just yesterday that I locked the door of my classroom for the last time and told myself I wouldn't look back. It feels like just yesterday that I cried wondering if I had made the right decision.
I have to tell you that I have never been so happy (on a personal level, I mean I have been thrilled family wise, relationship wise....you get my drift), I have never felt so challenged mentally and physically to do things right, to get things done the correct way, and I've never felt so actively engaged in any academic material that I have ever learned in college. While I enjoyed getting my bachelor's and my master's degrees, I never found it difficult. I liked some of the classes quite a bit and the professors and my classmates, but I guess it never really felt like home- but I didn't realize that until now. But I will never regret my background in education. It has already helped me tremendously.
I walk into the nursing building and I feel at home. And I should-some days I am there so long it feels like I live there! It is part of me. I'm smiling on the way to school most days, though not all. I really truly enjoy my professors, and have such a camaraderie with my classmates that I never felt possible. People that I can talk to about the ins and outs of something that I am passionate about. It is a really good feeling! Though I still have far to go in this program, and in my nursing career of course, I can tell you that it feels real. There's no other way to describe it. With in just one week, I have cried because I am overwhelmed, I have jumped with joy over understanding a concept or getting something down, I have witnessed a patient in the process of dying and the sorrow of their family, and I've witnessed things too gross to really talk about with most normal people, though I thought they were amazingly cool! Nursing is real. The few days I have spent in the hospital left me with the same feeling I had in my CNA hospital rotation-you leave kind of in a daze, amazed that life for many other people has still been carrying on outside those hospital doors. Nursing school makes me feel real. It is such a good fit for me. I love nursing school, despite the huge stress, seemingly unrealistic expectations, time crunches, sadness and anxiety...or maybe, maybe because of all these things, knowing at the end of the day that not only can I do this, but I can make a difference to a patient.
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