Being a nursing major in general is a struggle in itself. In the end though it will be worth it, or at least we all hope so. I'm not going to be in debt all of my life for it to not be worth it. The worst thing is being a guinea pig with your teachers and no body knowing what is going on. The work load is enormous, the stress is overwhelming, there seems to be no time in a day and a social life is non existent.
Professors say that for every credit of a class you should study for 3 hours a day. I have two 3 credit classes, which is 18 hours of studying and I still have three other classes. I'm not even awake for 18 hours a day. Now if you didn't know, there are 24 hours in a day. If that's what I'm supposed to do then I will never sleep, eat, drink, pee, go to class or work or even breathe. I understand there is about 8 billion things we have to learn as nursing students because people are putting their lives in our hands and I wouldn't want someone taking care of me who doesn't know left from right. This just adds to the overwhelming wave of stress that us nursing majors experience. You have to be excellent at time management and stay on top of your workload or you will stress so hard that your hair will fall out. Everytime we hear the word test or quiz our brains melt and alarms go off in our brains. Then the teachers brains have alarms going off because we start bombarding them with questions because we want to know pretty much every question on the test, how it's set up, what number 24 is, how many questions there are, if there are open ended questions or if it's a multiple choice test. When in reality none of these questions matter because we are going to stress the entire time until the test and the entire time until the next test comes around the corner.
Syllabus mean nothing in high school because once we get it we throw it away. In college, syllabus' are like the bible in a nursing major. It tells you all of your teachers contact information because you will blow up their inboxes at least five times a day, it gives you a class by class description of what is due and when tests are. We live for syllabus' because we would have all gone crazy by now if we didn't have them. Any nursing major can understand the meaning and value of a syllabus. I have my anatomy and physiology class that has a mixture or nursing majors, health science majors and physical therapist majors. I've noticed that at least 96% of the questions asked come from nursing majors because we are the type of people who want to know everything right then and there and want to figure out the reason for everything and how everything works. We are just wired differently than other people. It's a struggle and a blessing at the same time.
Anyone was or is currently going through college as a nursing major knows the struggles of not having a social life. You spend your weekends working on homework or studying or practicing blood pressure on your mom or little brother. I know I spend my free time working on flash cards or making sure i'm not 12 years behind on homework. For example i will be spending this weekend working on Pharmacology and Anatomy and Physiology homework. Sounds exciting doesn't it? I think so. Partying and drinking doesn't even seem appealing to me. I'd rather be deep in reading about the brain or std's. It's just one of the many struggles of being a nursing major.