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!