If you are in nursing school, you know what I mean when I say the quote, "Nursing school didn't just teach me how to be a nurse." Let's face it, when you pick a career such as nursing, you know you are in for the ride of your life. It cannot be compared to any college you have previously attended or that your friends are currently enrolled in. It's hard, stressful and the most time-consuming career field you will ever engage in achieving a degree in. However, it is one that changes you for the better.

I am currently in my senior year of nursing school, which involved two extremely difficult years of anxiety-filled lungs, depressed tears and many days of me wanting to just drive my car into the nearest lake and pray that all else took care of my misery. On the flip side, it made me a more caring, crazy-yet-chill girl and overall a better me.

Nursing school is caring. In a field where you watch people who are horrified of what is to come, your heart falls into your belly. You see them in their most fragile states and hear the most upsetting stories imaginable whether it be about their family lives or about things happening in their own minds. The second someone reaches their hand out to you and you grab it, you can feel what the word care actually means. It is in every inch of your body. It isn't just a word anymore, it's a feeling that creeps from your big toe up your bones and warms your heart. It flows through your veins. Being caring becomes real when you can sit in complete silence with your patient and feel the invisible cloud of comfort surrounding you both.

Nursing school is being chill, yet high-strung. Going through school, your instructors have it all together while on the contrary, you do not. No matter how hard they try to keep you up to date, you are already 10 pages deep into a feeling of "I am already falling behind and she wants me to remember what?" So, you begin to live in your own motto you created which states, "I am living minute to minute. I refuse to think about tomorrow until it is here." You learn things to lose your shit over and things to just shrug your shoulders and take the loss. It's a chaotic balance that you truly don't get until you walk through those doors on day one and realize you already are 110 assignments underground and are feeling like 50 shades of smashed.

Nursing school is becoming a better you. You look in the mirror two years down the road and see a beautiful soul. You see someone who has fought patient's battles with them, who has learned more than you thought you ever could, who has had the opportunity to see and feel things not many others ever will. You see a strong person who would fight for anyone anywhere, one who allows emotions of others to hit home yet remain strong, and lastly, you see exactly who you were meant to be. You'll smile at yourself and your belly will flutter and your glimmer will let you know you are perfectly correct in who you are.

Nursing school teaches you more than just pills and charts, it's a way of life. It doesn't just affect you in a hospital room with a patient. Before you know it, you mold into the most well-rounded, unselfish, responsible, yet fun loving human being possible. You are laughter, tears and an angel sent to these patients and if you haven't gotten that from school then get the f*** out, we don't need more shit nurses like you.