Student Blogs

When I decided to change my major from marketing to nursing, I had no idea of the journey I would be embarking on. Through it all, taking up nursing was the most challenging and rewarding thing that I considered privileged doing. I had no idea that after two and a half years, I would be the happiest that I had ever been — that was when I walked across the stage on graduation and received the diploma I desired and worked for years.

Nevertheless, nothing prepared me for what nursing school would actually be like. The excitement of purchasing scrubs, the anticipation of reviewing my class schedule, and the sheer bliss of stepping foot into the hospital for the first time as a nursing student did not come without a price.

As I would soon learn, nursing school would provide me with both rewards and challenges. It was always such a challenge to spend my weekends studying for hours, sacrificing sleep, and picking up night shifts during the week to accommodate my new schedule. At the same time, it was also rewarding to see academic improvement amidst all the stress.

During the time of the pandemic, it was challenging for every nursing student to transition from a nice comfortable classroom surrounded by friends who we had grown to love to complete chaos, panic, and uncertainty. Despite this challenge, it was rewarding to see our class find new ways to support each other, and with it came resilience we did not realize we possessed.

It was difficult to get up at 5 am to go to the clinical practice three times a week. The exhaustion melts away, however, when I greet the patients early in the morning, tell them that I am excited for the day ahead, and I’m thankful for the opportunity to be their student nurse. It was even more rewarding when they thanked me for taking care of them at the end of my day. But for me, nothing was as rewarding as seeing a patient get discharged with a full recovery.

However, nobody prepared me for the hardest moments of being a nursing student: experiencing sadness when patients don’t want to go home because they had nobody to go home to, experiencing grief when a patient dies, and witnessing heartbreaks when doctors give family members the worst news they will ever receive. Through it all, I had the opportunity to learn how to handle moments like these with empathy and compassion and a renewed vigor to help others in need.

If you are about to begin your journey into nursing school, just know that even though there are bad moments, there are even more amazing moments. There will be moments that remind you of the reason you chose to be a nurse in the first place. These are the moments that provide you with so much happiness and satisfaction. It is these moments that I will carry with me as I begin my new job as a nurse. Lastly, these are the moments that have shaped me into the nurse that I am proud to be now.