Dear Nursing School,

We’ve become well acquainted in the past few years. The struggle of taking pre-requisites, studying and doing well on the TEAS test or HESI exam and then applying and anxiously awaiting for the letter that said, “Congratulations, you’ve been accepted into the BSN Class of 2016.” Many of us have dreamed to receive that letter since our younger days, some of us just deciding in high school that we wanted to pursue nursing and some of us coming back for a second or third degree no matter what our age.

To say that nursing students and nursing school have a love-hate relationship would be an understatement. We, as students, put so much pressure and stress on ourselves to do well that we ultimately cause ourselves to overthink and fail. We all enter having the same goal: become a nurse to help others. Although many of our classmates with change their degree, fail a course and fall behind in the program or just flunk out we continue to push on through.

Nursing school, you are a cruel acquaintance. I can’t even make myself call you a friend of mine, no matter how much we’ve been through together. You use your students and whip us around like a rag doll in a hurricane. You run us ragged from long three hour classes with no breaks for lunch to long clinical days multiple times a week. You cause nursing students to rethink their major multiple times a week. You make us wonder why we want to continue doing this.

Nursing faculty, we expect more from most of you. There are some, who are few and far between, that show us kindness, compassion and support. There are those that empathize with us because we’ve all been there before. Then there are the many who toss us aside like we’re just there to pay their paychecks and then go home. From a profession that is supposed to be loving, kind and compassionate toward their patients, the nursing students don’t always receive this treatment from faculty.

We ask ourselves, “Why do we continue to do this hellacious thing called nursing school?” Then we realize its because we have a passion for helping others. You find a course that you have fallen in love with or a specialization in the hospital that interests you and that’s why you continue to push forward.

Nursing school is not for the weak or the faint of heart. It is for those that have a self drive to make people feel better, to comfort those that are sick, dying or a family that has lost a loved one. We go through nursing school because we love what we do or were impacted by someone who took care of us when we were younger.

Although nursing school is a huge bully, nursing faculty isn’t always the most supportive and caring, test are strenuous and set us up for failure by having select all that apply questions and clinicals are long and hard, we will all survive. To those applying to nursing school, it’s not easy but its well worth it to see the smile on a patients face when you help them. To those in nursing school, continue to fight and push through, one day you will be an amazing nurse (that’s what keeps me going). To those of you who have graduated from nursing school, congratulations-- you have slain the beast. Nursing may be one of the hardest but most rewarding jobs out there.

Sincerely,

A nursing student whose tank is nearly depleted.