Am I wrong from refusing to help a friend?

I agree with everyone that has posted! Your 1st (& really only) responsibility is to yourself.

To alleviate your guilt- imagine the situation in reverse- if you were having difficulty with a class - during finals, no less- would she drop everything to come help you? Probably not.

It sounds like y'all have developed this pattern over years and it's time to break it before your work suffers. You need the best GPA you can get to be accepted into a nursing program & you'll be kicking yourself when time comes to apply if you let your grades slide now.

If you've given her tips on studying that she's not taken, that's on her. If there was help available to her earlier in semester she didn't make use of, that's on her. It sounds like she wants you to do it for her- not just help.

And be prepared, she will blame you if she makes bad grades/doesn't pass. If she's not taking responsibility for studying/learning material- then the result certainly can't be her fault, right?

And shame on your family for making you feel one ounce of guilt for taking care of your own future!! Are your parents helping with tuition? You might want to mention how irresponsible it would be to waste their money not doing as well in your classes just to help your friend!

How have you been friends with this person for 10 years?

Thank you @ Tricia J for giving me options to help her. I just told her that I will meet up with her early in the morning tomorrow before my study group and I'm hoping that I can help her without having to learn the material for her as I have a final tomorrow as well and don't want to confuse myself.

No, no, no! Use your extra time to sleep before study group. You aren't a free tutor or a charity or her mother. If I am waking up early to tutor ANYONE, my rate of pay is $30/hr.

I had an instructor actually tell me to stop helping a friend when my grades started suffering while helping a her while she was drowning. She was sinking me.

I felt badly but took her advice. This person was in no way, shape or form meant to be a nurse and could not succeed, even WITH my help. Lesson learned.

You have to take care of yourself. You can be her friend, but you have to set boundaries where your studies are concerned. I wish you well.

Nope, nope, and nope. There is a saying "Your lack of preparation should not be my emergency" and I never really understood it until I met a friend in nursing school who is such a slacker. She is great to hang out with outside of school but as far as academics go, she never prepares, always forgets supplies/important papers, runs late to class/clinical almost every week, and her only study method is to cram the night before a test. I can't tell you how many times she has had to borrow my stethescope in clinical, no matter how many times I tell her PACK YOUR BAG THE NIGHT BEFORE WOMAN! I help her when I can, but I stopped doing late night-before-the-test study sessions with her because it was literally just me feeding information to her. I value my 8 hrs. of sleep way too much to be doing that, which is why I use my time wisely and spread my studying over the week before a test. I can't even sit next to her in class anymore because all she does is text and browse on her phone during our two hours of lecture and then ask people around her last minute questions when our professor hands out a quiz at the end, and then I'll get the inevitable text asking what our homework or online work is for next class when our prof repeated it three times. Do not feel bad about not helping her. It would be one thing to refuse to study with her altogether ever, but not doing it finals week when you have your own classes to study for is not selfish of you.

I think you have more than set appropriate boundaries. Your friend is manipulative.

Don't let others guilt you into not acting in your best interests. You have done enough and more than met your friend half way. Now its her turn to do what she needs to do for herself.

It's not your job to fix her.

I did PT before nursing. Graduated with 4.0 gpa. Graduated from nursing with 3.8. They are both very challenging programs and it is sad that she apparently has no respect for what your program entails. Did you help her get through high school?

You are both very young and as you both mature you may decide that being a close friend of hers is not worth it, esp if the relationship is all about meeting her needs and not considering yours.

Yes, I used to always help write her essays for her in high school! But she had a 3.8 GPA while in HS and I had had a 2.9 so I think the environment just changed for her. Because I'm not a 4.0 student in college.

How have you been friends with this person for 10 years?

Since I was 7 years old and was going on my 8th birthday. She was my neighbor and are mothers talked to one another.

"...nursing is an easy major to have and get into"

Uh yeah, right. And as far as you helping her ... it reminds me of this: when I was a programmer, in my first job we did 3 progressively-harder practice programs before we started doing any real work. One guy was caught cheating on one of the practice programs, and my immediate thought was that if you can't do the practice programs, how are you going to do the REAL stuff when you're on your own?

No, no, no! Use your extra time to sleep before study group. You aren't a free tutor or a charity or her mother. If I am waking up early to tutor ANYONE, my rate of pay is $30/hr.

Yeah I admit I couldn't get up like I promised her and sorta sent her off today accidently.

Nope not wrong

Yes, I used to always help write her essays for her in high school! But she had a 3.8 GPA while in HS and I had had a 2.9 so I think the environment just changed for her. Because I'm not a 4.0 student in college.

This is a very, very common thing that happens with someone who has undiagnosed or untreated ADHD/ADD and they start a new job or at key junctures of school transitions like middle to high school or high school to college or an adult going back to school after being out for a long time.

People with ADHD/ADD develop strategies to compensate in their job or studying/completing assignments that help them to be successful in the same/similar environments but in a new environment the strategies no longer work and it all starts to fall apart.

Tell her to check to see if she can get evaluated at school by a psychologist/psychiatrist as it could be free or very low cost. If she doesn't want to go to the school, I'm sure there are a ton people who she could see in Chicago.

ADHD/ADD doesn't go away and its ramifications can wreak havoc as the new situations keep getting worse and the top comorbidities of it are Anxiety and Depression.

She needs to find out if this is the issue ASAP and if it is, some decisions need to be made in the form of treatment she may want to try and what accommodations she may need to help her be successful- maybe not in PT but in something that she is interested in.

Also, you are not wrong for not helping her in the way that she wants to be helped at all.