Nursing school is an exciting, rewarding, and stressful few years. You're expected to memorize a very large amount of information and be able to apply all of it to real life situations. You have to take difficult exams and quizzes, write care plans, learn skills and take tests on them, and go through clinical rotations, all while trying not to flunk out or go insane. No matter how stressed or angry you get during nursing school, you know that you love helping others and there's no other career you'd rather have. Still, you come close to losing your mind on the daily. Here's how it feels being in nursing school, as told by Michael Scott.
1. You start your first day of nursing school filled with excitement about what the next few years will hold.
This is the first day of the rest of your life ... that's something to be excited about, right?
2. You quickly realize that nursing school is no joke, and you're already close to failing after just two weeks of classes.
Well, that excitement didn't last long.
3. You know you have to get your grades together quickly, so you detach yourself from the outside world so you can buckle down and study.
You don't have time to be an active member of society when you're responsible for knowing the pathophysiology, signs and symptoms, nursing diagnoses, and treatments of 50 different disease processes.
4. When it comes time for exams, you try not to freak out.
It's hard to stay calm when your grade depends on your ability to choose the "most correct" answer when every answer is correct.
5. You get your grades back from exams and other assignments and notice that you're not doing as well as you thought you would be. Still, you try your best to be optimistic.
There's no time to cry, you have to get back to studying.
6. You start clinicals, which means early bedtimes and even earlier mornings. You scroll through Instagram on your way to the hospital at 6 a.m. and see that all your non-nursing friends went out last night.
You just want to be able to live the life of a normal college student, but that's nearly impossible with your hectic schedule.
7. Sometimes, school makes you so stressed that you spend the night lying awake in bed for hours. After getting about 45 minutes of sleep, you wake up at the crack of dawn and head to clinicals, where you're expected to be responsible for other people's lives.
You can't even function, but you still have to take care of your patients or die trying.
8. Your friends complain about their five-page papers from their gen-ed classes, while you're over here writing a 30-page care plan.
Tell me about how hard your classes are one more time, I dare you.
9. You smell C. diff for the first time at clinicals, and that is a very unpleasant moment of your nursing career.
That smell won't leave your nose for weeks.
10. After being in nursing school for some time, you realize that you still don't know as much as you probably should. The work gets harder, and you lose your motivation to study and be a good student.
You'll learn it before you take the NCLEX, so that's all that matters.
11. You're not doing very well in school, but you're not doing terribly, so you're still satisfied with how things are going.
Passing is all you really care about.
12. People ask you how nursing school is going, and you're not sure how to respond.
It's terrible and you hate it, but you love it at the same time. It's an odd relationship.
13. When you get assigned to non-compliant patients, it's very difficult for you.
You refuse to drink your colonoscopy prep, but you're going to complain about this hospital "not being able to figure out what's wrong with you?" Cool.
14. On the other hand, there are days that you get assigned to patients who are extremely kind and make you love what you're doing.
Good patients make for great clinical days.
15. When you have to do something you've never done before in the clinical setting, you try to be confident and act like you know what you're doing.
"Have you ever given a shot before?" Absolutely! But only on a mannequin.
16. When the end of the year comes, you've had just about enough of nursing school. You just want to run away and forget about all the work you still have to do.
If you ignore all your work, maybe it will go away.
17. Finals week is the worst week of your life, and you don't think that you can take any more of this torture that is nursing school.
Nursing school has officially drained you of your sanity and well-being.
18. But somehow, you pass all your exams and finally get a much-needed break!
You: 1, Nursing school: 0.
