Cost of nursing school
I had a conversation recently that caused me to mull over how costly nursing school is. I wonder if people would scream gratuitously at me when I am trying to help them if they had any idea what I’ve given up for this profession.
- I gave up a successful career to go to school. Cost: $70,000 per year for going on 3 years = $210,000
- New student loans: $30,000 (plus interest)
- New car to commute: $14,000 (hey, it’s a Toyota)
- Gas and tolls: freaking expensive, don’t track because I don’t want to know
- Books and supplies: $3,000 and counting
- Two trips to the ER with school-induced panic attacks: $6500
All that I was expecting (except for the trips to the ER). What I didn’t know about was the terrible cost that can’t be quantified.
- I lost a relationship over nursing; my previous partner couldn’t take my nonavailability and split. Nursing school makes you pick between human beings and a profession. There isn’t really room for both.
- I have spent a year and half as a nervous wreck, suffering from numerous stress-related disorders (if you ask around, you’ll find that nursing students are a puking, diarrhea-having, ulcer-developing, migraine-suffering, panic attack–having bunch of folks who are forced to pop Pepcid, antidepressants, and anxiolytics like they’re going out of style, at least at my school). School has destroyed my health!
- I am exhausted ALL the time. Even on my days off. Why? Residual and/or preemptive dread. I just know that some new frustration or humiliation is waiting around the next corner. Being set up to fail constantly makes a person strung out, hopeless, and depressed at best.
- I have almost completely lost my enthusiasm for nursing. I feel it has been systematically and apparently deliberately beaten out of me. Those T shirts that say “I’m a nursing student and I see why there is a nursing shortage” are NO SHIT.
- I have in fact lost my enthusiasm for anything at all except for periods of uninterrupted sleep. Which never occur.
- I am enveloped in a sense of learned helplessness, which I have never had before (I have lost the sense that I have any control over my destiny or that I can influence outcomes).
Had I read this list previously, I would have said, “This is a sign of immaturity. I am an adult and confident in my ability to take care of myself and avoid these terrible outcomes.” This is because the hideousness of nursing school cannot be adequately described. It is volumes of dreary relentlessness pounding into you while you are told you are doing everything wrong and that despite all your hard work and sacrifices you MIGHT be kicked out on your tush for some arbitrary bit of fluff that you might or might not have a reasonable chance of knowing about beforehand. It is being told, “Do X.” Then when you do X, you are told, “WHY are you doing X???” “Contradiction” is truly the summary of nursing school. So: the real cost has been a death of my old self in a very real way, and not in a phoenix-out-of-the-ashes way. In a ghost-of-my-former-self way. I’m starting to sound like a Visa commercial (“True self…priceless”).
It’s a good damn thing I actually like nursing. If I didn’t feel like a fish who’d found water, I would SO be out of here. Right now the only bright side is the finish line and my job in the meantime. Maybe my school is being proactive and simply educating us about burnout BEFORE we get job-related burnout!
Ok, well that made me relieved to not have been accepted @ OHSU!
My commune is sounding better and better.
Hey there! I loved this post! May I add it to next week’s change of shift?
ohh, welcome to the club. I have not had my love for nursing permanently beaten out of me.. yet, but it happens for days or weeks at a time. The stress is unreal, and multidimensional. I stress over stressing! The KEY thing is to work through it and find some small enjoyment in each and everyday, and accomplishment of the day or week.
I wish I felt like a fish who found water. This semester has knocked it right out of me…
I wish I could say it will get better when you graduate; oh, right, I can. I swear they make nursing school so heinously difficult so that in the “Real World” when the proverbial brown stuff hits the fan, you’re used to dealing with the stress of a nearly impossible situation.
Besides, there’s a great feeling when you finally get to sign “RN” after your name. While it doesn’t make the trauma of nursing school go away, it does soothe the soul a bit.
I feel your pain. My very recent experience was disturbingly similar in the way school affects the students.
There are many things about nursing school that should be brought into the industrial age, let-alone the 21st century.
I can only urge you on to complete the program and reach the relative sanity on the other side.
Good luck!
Wow! I thought I was the only person who felt like this in nursing school.
The loss of income was the main reason why I chose to do an accelerated BSN. It was the only way to quickly (what an oxymoron!) to recover the cost.
Thankfully, my physical ailments are few, but boy, sleep is so nice! It’s almost like vacation.
Good luck in your nursing school endeavor! Keep plugging away!
Preach on girl! That is exactly how I felt in nursing school. It was horrible and people just don’t get the toll it takes.
OMG! This is beyond true! I have even had the two trips to the ER thinking I was having a heart attack!
I’m so glad that I’m not the only one feeling like my world is falling apart. I had no idea that school would be so horrible. All I want is for people to stop telling me that “It will be worth it in the end” because I’m tired of hearing that. I know it will be worth it, and non-nursing students have NO IDEA what this experience is like! I’m not a stupid person, I’m just being made to feel like it on a daily basis. Will this insanity ever end? Please tell me that it will get better before I’m done!
I agree totally, Im finding that the ability to not let it affect you WHILE still retaining a mindset and lifestyle that doesn’t turn you into a selfish hardass that can no longer enjoy life is the hardest thing about nursing school. I am about to grad in 2 weeks and I’m pulling out all my pre-nursing habits to pull myself back to that happy positive person I was before nursing school. A lot of people are happy for me like when I grad high school or got a new car or something. Personally I feel that any reserve for positive feelings of graduation have been sucked out of me from enduring that learned helplessness and daily reminder of “your not good enough.” The happiness and feeling of success is just not there. Its the kind of feeling you get when your released from a watered down version of a hostage situation, saying to yourself “I’m just glad its over and no one got hurt.” Nobody understands what you go through. The best thing you can do for yourself is overcome it and not bring yourself to the level of helplessness. Because after that all you are required to do is improve the quality of life for others.
I just happened to luck upon your post and now I can say that you made me scared. I’m starting nursing school on Monday!
A person is asking to learn everything that they would expect the caregiver of their most beloved family member in a matter of 2-4 years. When you think about that, it helps one to understand why nursing school is and, should be the hardest thing you will ever do in your life. Tranformation of a heart that feels compassion in a selfish culture, hands that are trained to be a part of life’s most vulnerable and significant moment and minds that can problem solve and plan solutions– that is change that you can believe in.
Nursing school is, in short, hell. Very full of contradictions and lack of compassion. I have to agree with that. During the quarter when we studied the cardiac system, my father committed suicide. When I got back to school, I was told that I could take the test when I was ready. Two days later, I was told that I had to take it by Friday. I took it Friday because I had to, not because I was ready. I failed it. Then I found out that the people that were sick or just feigned sickness to gain time to study for the test were taking it the following week. I raised a stink and they threw my failed test out. But that was after much hollering and screaming. They then averaged my other test grades, all ‘A’s, and gave me that as a grade for the test. But what person in their right mind would make a grieving student take a test one week before the others who were sick or feigned sickness had to take it? Why not let me take it with the other students. See, that is the kind of stupidness that is present in nursing school. I have heard things are not much better elsewhere even now.
I just stumbled upon your blog after typing “I feel like a stupid nursing student” into Google’s search engine, after a particularly demeaning day at clinical. I’m a 2nd year nursing student in Toronto, Ontario and holy hell, I never thought I’d feel this stressed out – and I’m high strung as it is! I can handle the academics of it all…it’s the, “what are you doing? Why aren’t you doing it better? What else can you do? Why didn’t you write this in your documentation?”. I left clinical in tears tonight, because I think my clinical instructor thinks I’m a moron (eventhough I’m top of my class) and never gives me anything challenging to do. Whine whine whine…the requiem for every nursing student
Your blog made me feel a bit better, thanks!
Second year student here, I’ve had to explore things like meditation and zen philosophy to keep myself sane. Applying these with postural techniques, daily exercise, the guitar as a creative outlet, and what I lovingly refer to “semi-regimented” social spontenaity, as well as balanced nutrition, attempts at non-procrastination, and scheduled times for meaningful human contact I have managed to stay sane and keep my stress levels low… most of the time… all the while repeating the mantra “growth out of suffering”.
Keep going.
– Nicholas
How many more years do you have to go? retin a micro Speaks pleasantly with staff and patients and does not disregard their