I Hate My Program/instructors!

How do you feel about nursing itself and the subject matter of the courses you are taking? A lot of us like nursing, but hated nursing school.

If you really hate the patient interaction and/or have no interest in the subject matter you are studying, then yes, you should be reconsidering your career choice. However, if it is just that you don't like some of your teachers ... well ... that's only a temporary problem. Next semester, you will have other teachers.

Everywhere you go ... and whatever career you choose ... you will find some people and some things that you don't like. The challenge is to analyze the situation and figure out whether it is all of nursing that you don't like, or just those particular people. No one can answer that for you: that's one of those things you have to figure out for yourself.

Do you remember how you disliked certain people and/or things about junior high school? Well, that was a long time ago and you should have gotten over that by now. The same thing is true of the situation today. In 10 years, you will have gotten over the fact that you didn't like certain aspects of nursing school. Don't let your dislike of a few people determine your long-term career choice. Put it (and them) in perspective. However, if you really don't like nursing itself ... that's another story.

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I don't understand why so many of you students feel obligated to get caught up in the politics of your programs. You're there to learn how to be a nurse--period. Can't you just concentrate on that? Throughout the 70+ years (hopefully!) that you will live you are going to run into people you won't like and businesses and programs you will participate in that won't be run in a way you like . Some of them you will HAVE to work and get along with. Some will involve relatives, patients, co-workers, and who knows who else. You can't walk away from your dream of being a nurse because you don't like the way the nursing program is run. You may not like the program you are in, but how can you possibly know it is any worse in some other nursing program? Honestly, the harder you work for your nursing degree, the more you will learn and appreciate it later. With all the long waiting lists and competition to get into nursing schools if you have the time to wait out another place in another nursing school, then go ahead, quit. Better yet, look for what is positive in the way your program is designed. Those positive attributes will have direct effect on you. Take your focus off what you feel is negative and concentrate on the positives and learning your nursing theory and skills. Let the argumentative, self-destructive people who can't control their behavior fight the school politics. It will only come back to bite them in the bum later. It's almost a sure bet.

32 years ago I came away from my orientation day of nursing school shocked after we were all told that there would be no formal lectures. We were going to be given objectives to achieve and we would have to learn the stuff on our own. You should have heard the complaints. Some of us dug in and knuckled down to figure out how to master this "new" method of learning. Others had to be literally lead around by the hand by the nursing instructors because they were just too stubborn to do it on their own--some ended up dropping out. Those of us who finished all passed our state board the first time around--the old 2 day written state boards. Out here in California the required score to pass was the highest in the nation, so our school did us well with their "new" method.