Help! Should I quit?

[LJW12]

I'm currently on my first year of placements which will end just before Christmas. As a side note I'm a UK student.

I have missed a lot of hours due to sickness during my first few weeks which will mean for the remaining 10 weeks I will somehow have to make sure I do a 48 hour week on my placements, then after Christmas go back onto placement (this is allowed) for an additional 60-70 hours.

This is quite a lot of work. I'm willing to do it, however there are several additional issues which are making it worse:

1)I'm already exhausted. I'm also in the middle of a break up with my boyfriend as I've realised he's never going to be supportive. I haven't had a proper holiday in years because I spent 18 years as a single parent, then more or less went straight back to school as I really want to sort out my career and start earning good money. A bit of a catch-22. I also suffer from IBS which sometimes makes me tired; I've discussed this with the uni's occupational health nurse and she just said to reconsider nursing - what could I do - I decided to ignore it as she wasn't very nice.

2)The ward I'm on currently (& potentially my next one also) is very disorganised and not very caring towards students. They haven't bothered to work out a rota for me, which means I'm free to choose my own shifts so long as most correlate with my mentor. Whilst this sounds great, I feel a bit on my own.

3)I've failed my latest essay which was a reflection on an aspect of care on placement. So I have to re-do it. I'm sure it will be fine as I have until December, however this has really discouraged me. I normally do very well academically; I already have a degree in psychology and it was not hard to get good grades for that.

4) As a mature student and with bills to pay I need to start working on regular Sunday bank shifts in order to make ends meet. This puts my working week at 60 hours.

5) I have not found any support from university. I've emailed the lead lecturer for placements about my hours asking for confirmation that I can make them up after Christmas and letting her know of the issue and she hasn't even bothered to reply.

6) I'm unhappy with the university. They are supposed to provide 45 weeks of learning per year. We get 14 weeks of classes which only consist of two half days per week. We then get 2 months off in the summer, then we're left on our own on placement for 16 weeks. I felt totally unprepared for my placements this year and the ward is so unhelpful and a lot of the nurses are unfriendly. So I've applied to transfer to different universities but it will probably mean a six month break as there isn't time to switch in January because I have these hours to make up.

7) Even if I quit I can't really do so now. I would at least need another job to go to. Although I'm 38 I feel I would be letting down my family by quitting as my mother gave me a lot of money to enable me to quit my job as a civil servant and become a student. I would feel such a failure for quitting. I at least need to complete year one.

8) I thought I really wanted to be a nurse, but I hate working long days and night shifts. I wonder if I would be miserable as a nurse.

9) On the other hand I desperately want to travel the world and nursing seems the most likely way of doing so (not that this was my reason for doing it, but it's a good one to keep me in it).

10) However, I also considered teaching (I guess primary school). I could do a PGCE for a year then be a teacher instead. I could take a six month break from nursing school to get some experience then decide a bit later which one to go for.

Is this my best option?

How on earth do I get through these next few weeks? Especially if the wards I'm on are not very supportive in organising my basic shifts let alone extra ones? I'm so overwhelmed.

Any support, advice, help or insights from anyone would be appreciated.