Three years ago, a promise was made to me. I was accepted into the Rutgers nursing program in New Brunswick, my dream come true. On that day, I was promised the highest quality education and state-of-the-art facilities. I was promised the most knowledgeable professors and extensive resources to ensure my academic progression. I was told that this school would do everything in its power to ensure that I would succeed. I was told that upon my graduation, every employer would want me when they saw a Rutgers degree on my resume. I was promised a future.

Little did I know that my dream would quickly become my biggest nightmare. The dream I trusted in so wholeheartedly, that I turned down a full scholarship to another university for it. If only I could go back and tell myself then, an eager and hopeful high school senior, that those were nothing more than empty promises made to guarantee my attendance and money. I am most likely not even graduating next year. My future was never their priority.

I had my doubts about these promises as the inconsistencies of the program began to surface throughout my three years so far. However, it was not until I experienced the way the nursing program--a department supposedly dedicated to ensuring health--has handled the COVID-19 pandemic that I realized how little this program really thinks of its students. Many of my classmates have parents and loved ones with cancer or other autoimmune diseases, and the fear of what could happen to them as a result of this virus is paralyzing. My best friend and fellow nursing student's father has stage 4 cancer and was told by his doctor that she is not allowed to return home, due to the risk she poses. These scenarios went unconsidered when Rutgers decided to force students out of their dorms and housing in a matter of a day, leaving them scrambling to find somewhere to live.

Many of my classmates have at least one parent who has been laid off or is out of work for an undetermined amount of time, leaving them to wonder how they are going to pay for not only their education, but for food and bills. Many of my classmates, including myself, are working on the front lines, enduring hours of dangerous exposure at hospitals treating COVID-19 patients. My paycheck is helping to keep my family afloat right now, since my parent's income has become non-existent. Instead of thanking me for putting myself at risk to help others, the way the general public has done by celebrating healthcare workers as heros, my professors have told me to "quit" my job, "and focus on schoolwork." I would not have chosen to pursue this career if I wasn't willing, ready, and passionate about saving lives, and to suggest that I give up my job to dedicate more time to one professor's specific class defeats the entire purpose of the education I was looking for when I came to Rutgers. This is not to say that my job is any more important than anyone else's, because whoever needs to work right now in order to survive should be commended for doing so and balancing that with schoolwork. My classmates and I have only searched for some compassion for our financial circumstances, but instead we are met with these ignorant statements from professors who fail to consider that it is not a "choice" I have the luxury of making at this point in time.

When students are not working or struggling to make ends meet financially, they are studying from home where they are fighting with parents and siblings, who are also working from home, for space and resources. They are told to "go buy an ethernet cable" or "tell your family to get off the computer," as if those are reasonable solutions. We are scolded when we don't sit at desks during our online clinicals, yet many people don't even have desks at home. This demand for constant professionalism from us strikes me as funny, since this week's online clinical consisted of our professors forgetting to mute their microphones before bad-mouthing students to each other, in front of us.

Many of us have scheduled exam reviews with our professor for an exam we failed. Over half the students I know who attended one of these "exam reviews" either sat through the beration of scathing comments in tears, or held out long enough to break down in tears immediately afterward. When I reviewed my exam, instead of being shown the questions I got wrong and reviewing the correct answer, I was told that "clearly the content was an issue" for me, and I got "every pathophysiology of every disease incorrect." I was then told that I should have started studying for our next exam three weeks ago, even though that is not the only class I am taking, nor is it the only exam I have coming up. I have eleven exams within the next three weeks, because the faculty assigned "mock boards" tests to be scheduled and taken on our own time, in addition to the exams that actually count for our grades.

The importance of compassion and empathy is constantly burned into our brains by these professors, yet it appears that they themselves are unable to remember it when it matters most.

We were told that we would get a chance to voice our opinions, yet in the two "town talks" held by the administration so far, our concerns have been brushed aside. The deans keep telling us that our academic performance is "comparable" to previous years of students, as if that somehow makes the 50% passing rate acceptable. If this is a trend in the performance and grading of students in the program, wouldn't it make sense to fix the program rather than blame the students?

Any question we ask about the possibility of holding courses in the summer in order to avoid waiting an entire year to remediate, is met with a reminder that we "still have the option to withdraw." This is because by backing us into a corner, faced with either the choice to withdraw or failure, the professors are trying to ensure that the school's passing rate will not suffer. It has never been clearer that what this program cares about most is its image, no matter the cost. Today, a large portion of our online discussion centered around a "7 step plan for managing stress" that was outlined for us in a powerpoint, and telling us to "try taking a ten minute walk" before our next exam. When we express that we don't have time to do such things, they respond with "you just need to plan better." The faculty has never been able to admit their own mistakes and wrongdoings, so they choose to place the blame on vulnerable students instead. Our meeting ended with a halfhearted "hang in there!"

I never could have predicted the way this dream of mine has unraveled. The big campus, the football games, the high-tech simulation labs and sleek black scrubs were all just inviting accessories to what really mattered: the promise. The promise that Rutgers would give me something no other school could, that it would give me nothing but the best, and at the end of it all I would be guaranteed a future. Now I can't picture my graduation day, my success, my first day on the job as a real nurse with a degree. This program has done everything in its power to beat me down and push back my goals so far that I can't see them anymore. So for all those dreamers, those wide-eyed high school graduates looking at Rutgers just like I was, do not be mistaken. Once they have your money, this school sees you as nothing more than a dollar sign and a statistic.