entrance essay.. "what does being a nurse mean to me?"..thoughts?

[Klow30]

Hello all! I'm typing up my entrance essay to nursing school and wanted some outsiders thoughts on it. The topic is, "what does being a nurse mean to me?" TIA!

Most people see a nurse as a lovely lady with white scrubs and a nursing hat pinned on her head,handing out medications and checking vitals. Nursing is so much more than that.Becoming a nurse means, long days and even longer nights. Being off the clock,but still in the mindset of caring for others. Caring, compassionate, loving,respectful, and passionate; these are some valuable traits of a nurse. Nursinghas evolved into a community that can take on any specialties and settings.However, the one thing that has remained consistent is nurses genuinely lovepeople. At the end of a shift, when a nurse goes home, they do not "shut off"being a nurse. That compassion is embedded into their souls.

For me, becoming a nurse is a dream I have always had. In high school I began the journey of mynursing career by attending a vocational technical school to become a certified nursing assistant. Dreaming of working for UPMC, I was turned away multipletimes for lacking experience. So, I began to work at a nursing home, while still striving to reach my goal of working for UPMC. Finally, one interview changed my life in August 2010, I interviewed for a Cardio Unit at UPMC Mercy Hospital as a nursing assistant. From my first day, I knew I belonged in the hospital, in the medical field, as a nurse. As the years passed I eventually moved to a Medical Surgical Unit in Mercy and became a Patient Care Technician. I was always looking to advance in my career, learn as much as I can, and share my knowledge with others. I went to school to become a Phlebotomist, which helped me build a skill that some may lack in the hospital setting. Then, I found myself working as a Medical Assistant at UPMC Sports Medicine for Orthopedics. Every chance I got I advanced to learn more, grow more. Now sitting here, what is my next step? I've always dreamed of becoming a nurse,from my teenage years entering nursing assisting. I'm thankful for the UPMC interviews where I was told I needed more experience, because I've managed to prepare myself all these years for my next step, nursing school. Nursing school will come with many obstacles that I believe I'm prepared for. I've managed to go from a nursing home, caring for the elderly; to a major hospital caring for multiple different patients, to a doctors' office treating orthopedic injuries.I have a passion for pediatrics and orthopedics, so I hope that becoming a nurse will lead me back to orthopedics in the future. I've known what being a nurse is all about for all these years, just without the title. I've lost patients,I've comforted family members, and celebrated discharges. I've seen the uglyand the beauty of the nursing profession and medical field. While I love what Ido, and I'm extremely grateful for my experiences and opportunities; the needto be a nurse still echoes in my head because my goal has not been satisfied yet. All I have wanted all along is to be a nurse.

Nursing is a versatile field that can take you anywhere. It will allow me to care for others and continue to learn each day. After all these years I will be able to merge my love for patient care into a career. I look forward to learning how to think critically for each patient, and work with a team of others who care for people in the same way that I do. Nursing is a privilege and a blessing in my eyes,and I am excited to take my experience over the past ten years and build my education as a nurse from all those precious moments.

[idkmybffjill]

My main advise:

-You need a bit more focus in the essay. Each paragraph should have one main point and everything should lead back to it. Each paragraph should also cumulative into one obvious conclusion/main idea. You start off with compassion being kind of your thesis and then go into your experience without tying it directly to compassion being what nursing is to you. Instead, you kind of go into how your experience has prepared you (is this what being a nurse means to you?)

-Trim the excess and instead spend time on the important information. I don't think you need to spend so much time detailing that you went to this floor to this other floor to this doctor office when you could easily give us that information in a sentence. ("At UPMC, I have worked in cardio, medical surgical, and orthopedic environments.") That's not something that answers the prompt, of what being a nurse means to you, so why spend so much time on it? It should only be there to make a point about your topic. Because while you want to put in your work experience, skills, and positive traits in your nursing essay, you want them to be introduced in a way that they have a dual purpose--they both help you prove your point based on the writing prompt and help you sell yourself. (That or you need to make it clear how all that relates to the prompt.)

-Have someone who is good at grammar look over this and edit it. Your first paragraph is filled with sentence fragments, and there's several other errors throughout the essay. You want there to be no errors at all.

Also:

I'd be very hesitant to say "[you've] known what being a nurse is all about for all these years, just without the title" because it's impossible to actually experience what being a nurse is like without being a nurse, and I've seen that type of belief rub a lot of nurses the wrong way. Since your admissions committee will probably be made up of nurses, I'd suggest just taking that out.