I'm wondering if this is what I want to do anymore. I don't know if it is the program I am in or just me. On one hand, I like the subject matter and do want to help people (I know we all heard that one before). Then on the other hand, I do not like direct patient care and the organization of the program is pretty ******. I don't know what to do. I feel like I'm not cut out for it anymore. I thought I was coming in from high school, but now I just feel uncomfortable, like I'm just there. I put all this money into already with tuition, books, supplies, and the NSA membership, yet I'm doubting myself. Maybe it has to do with grades? I'm in my second semester and first semester of clinicals. I have no clue, but I would hate to finish (if that is possible), get my license (again, if that is possible), and hate going to work everyday at the hospital. I almost rather be the CNA so I don't have to have the responsibilities of the RN. I've never wanted to drop out of school before until now. I want to cry because it seems like what I had planned out for my life is now wrong. Even when I did read all the time (I don't anymore because I don't have the initiative to), I always wondered how I would put it into practice. The clinical portion has always seemed scary to me. It doesn't help that program is disorganized, with teachers telling you to go "Google" an answer and having miscommunication amongst themselves and with students. It's super expensive on top of that! I don't know what they're asking anymore. Now I don't care. I'm going to go crawl in a hole now. OK, not really, because I have to muster up some motivation to do this paper.
From what I'm getting, this is a pretty common experience. However, I'm seriously thinking this over. I'm just giving myself until the end of the semester before I make a decision, after the final grades come in. I already have a back up plan. At least if I had did an ADN program I would not had wasted so much time like with the BSN program.
I can't tell you to do it or not, but I want to share my story - btw I am not a nurse, nor am I a nursing student right now. I am re-taking my pre-reqs and keeping my options open because at this point in my life, I have to be flexible.
OK, here is my story (oh my, please bear with me, this gets long):
Waaaaay back in undergrad, in the early 90s, I was pre-BSN. I had some good friends in the same classes as me, and the very next semester I was going to apply, along with them, to the program. I would have gotten in right along with them, had I not changed my mind. Due to pressure from my family b/c I was getting straight As in my nursing pre-reqs (both the sciences and the nursing (patho, growth and development, etc..)) I changed my major to pre-med. Its not that I disliked nursing at that point, it is because I was being told I "could do better". I ended up majoring in community health education, which was really interesting. Public health interests me. I had a twinge of doubt when in my second to last semester, I heard one of my former pre-BSN classmates had just graduated and was working at a local hospital in the area of Nursing she always had wanted. Still, I loved what I was learning - problem was when I graduated and got married and moved for my husband's job, I found the health system in my new area hired nurses to do the community health outreach and education. I tried for a few mos to find a job besides temp office work, to no avail.
I decided at that point my best option was to go back and finish that nursing degree. Of course,I was no longer near my old school, so I checked out my options in my new town. My options were an almost-free LPN program at the local public vocational college that not only started that following month, but gave me full credit for my prerequisites, so I was to start right in on fundamentals and dosage calculations, which was the first of four professional quarters, or to try to get into the BSN program at the local college, which would have cost more, taken longer, and may have required additional prerequisites.
I went ahead and enrolled in the LPN program - my student loans were starting to come due and I could defer them and not incur additional ones. I figured I could bridge later on, and maybe this would be enough to help boost my health ed degree into something employable for the time being.
I started the program, did very well academically, and made it through skills checkoffs and on to the second half of the quarter, where we did clinicals at a nearby nursing home. I fumbled, was very nervous, discovered charting was much harder when it was actually a real patient and real chart versus practice homework, and felt like my time management was terrible. You know the feeling like the hands on the clock are spinning? It was stressful but those of us in the class who were not already CNAs were all kind of stressed. We tried to lean on each other.
Unfortunately, we had winter break between Q1 and Q2 and my stress, fear, waning confidence, and doubt got to me over the break. I had myself convinced that work was always going to be this stressful, or worse, that my skills sucked and were not getting better, and that the sweat I was soaked in at the end of each nursing home clinical day from not just physical work, but moreso from mental anxiety, was going to be a constant companion. I convinced myself that I would be absolutely miserable once I graduated. We went to visit family, and by the time we got off the plane for the 3 hour drive home at the end, I was in tears because I had gotten myself so worked up over it.
The first day back of Q2, we went as a class to the bookstore and got our Med-Surg books and then got briefed by the program instructors on what to expect the next day at the hospital. I was actually feeling OK because I was back with my classmates and new textbooks always put me in a good mood, but that only lasted a couple of hours into the following day at the hospital. After tours and orientation and a snack, our instructors gave us random stuff to do - I was to go take vitals for some rooms on the floor. The horrible feelings I had over break took over. My confidence plummeted, I got extremely shy, and could not even take a blood pressure. The only thing that saved me was my partner was a phlebotomist and used to being in and out of patient rooms and she could tell I was nervous and tried to keep me calm.
The next day, I went in and dropped out. My instructors did not try to help me figure out whether it was jitters I would get over - they just signed the paper for me to take to the advising office. By noon, I was enrolled in a different program that I just randomly picked because the advisor convinced me to stay and not waste the work I had already put in. I felt horrible guilt and relief at the same time. The relief did not last as long as the guilt and doubt.
I know this was a TON of personal detail - thanks for reading - and now, this is how I feel about all that I did and chose:
To this day, I still wish I had stayed in that BSN program. Barring that, I wish I had talked to someone who would have encouraged me to stick it out in the LPN program. I wish I had gotten the chance to talk to someone in the class ahead of ours, in Q4 (which was maternal-child health and many students enjoyed), who had been in my shoes recently, and could have helped me sort out whether I was just freaking out or whether it was more serious than that.
I felt like such a quitter, and, while it has been 12 years, and it does not come up in my mind every day, I still feel like one. It colors the choices I make in my education. I second-guess myself all of the time now. I wonder if, since I did it once, if it gets tough again, will I quit?
I urge you to give yourself the time you are talking about (sticking it out til the end of the semester) and try to do your best, despite how you currently feel.
I feel for you. I do. Its a terrible feeling to have.
There are other options though - and while you are sticking out this semester, you can have time to research them and make an intelligent decision so you aren't just running from something, but running to something else, if you decide to change your major.
As cliche as it may sound, nursing is not for everyone and THAT IS OKAY! I worked in mortgage for 15 years and HATED IT! I was like you, I would dread waking up in the morning, be physically sick walking into work, and just felt that I couldn't do it anymore. In fact, when I got a kidney stone last year, I was so happy that I didn't have to work that day! (That's when you REALLY know you hate something).
My suggestion, do what makes YOU happy. If it's not nursing, switch out. If it's the school, switch schools. The only person that lives your life is YOU. Do not let money or time get in the way of your happiness. It's SOOOOO not worth it!
Specializes in Critical Care; Cardiac; Professional Development.
YOu are too young to be this unhappy. Nobody gets through your age without regrets, so sticking with it just in case you regret quitting later is just not really something you need to calculate. Regrets come with life. I wish I did it at your age. oh well, I didn't, but I can still do it now and it is keeping me young.
You sound miserable. Only life experience will teach you that half the things you are miserable about (hours you don't like on days you don't like doing work you don't like causing bodily symptoms you don't like) will be there no matter what you do. It is okay not to have it all figured out right now. It is okay to change your mind. Go pursue your Happy. You may wind up back here, you may wind up somewhere you never planned, but if you don't go, you will always wonder what if. So go. Good luck!
I hear you. I'm getting a BSN for the sole purpose of moving on to nurse practitioner training (and the flack I get for this from RNs is intense...apparently I don't want to be a "real" nurse), but, on the other hand, I enjoy patient care.
It is okay to quit, though. Remember that. If you're not going to derive any satisfaction from your job until some distant future where you have a PhD...well, that's more than I'd be willing to put up with.
If you really don't like it, don't keep doing it. There are times when I wonder WHY I wanted to do nursing, but I work as a patient care tech and even though I hate changing C diff diapers all day long, I still enjoy the patient care part of it all. That's what nursing is and you don't want to hate your life until you get a masters. If you're THAT unhappy, find something else you love. Changing your mind is a part of life and there's no reason to feel bad about it.
You might want to look into a BS in Health Care Administration if there are any schools in the area with this kind of major. My school has a lot of health profession programs. They have a BS in Health Sciences, Pharmacy (Pharm D.), Respiratory Care, Speech Pathology, a bunch of things that take different routes from nursing but have similar results in satisfaction. They were my backup just in case I someday decide nursing isn't for me. Thankfully they all have the same pre-reqs so it wouldn't be as much wasted time. There are so many majors related to healthcare it's amazing, you just have to explore them.
What about Health Information management/Informatics?
I've been looking into that. There is a dual Master's degree program at the University of Texas where one could get both a Master's in Health Informatics and a Master's in Public Health.
It's not like I abhor the patients, its that I do not feel comfortable. Maybe it's my skill set? I feel pretty lousy in that. I can barely hear any heart or lung sounds sometimes, like everything goes mute. The stethoscope is on the proper side it has to be at the time, the ear pieces are pointing forward, and I'm in the right area, but i still can't hear. Maybe I'm over a rib. IDK I think my ears aren't trained for it. I can hear the bus coming from like an intersection away when I am getting ready to catch it and can hear roach feet walking on paper (gross I know), but I can't hear the damn sounds coming out the chest. Arghhh!!! Practice?
I feel like one of the poster's said above. You said you want to be a NP. I thought I wanted to do that, but if I do stay, it would have to be on the Informatics or Management end. When I went into nursing school, I knew I wasn't going to like the hospital. I'm interested in Public/Community Health. Then again, I feel like a nurse poseur for not wanting to work in the hospital. I rather be what they call a "Nurse Epidemiologist." I enjoyed the Epidemiology class I took last semester and the Stratifications class I'm taking this semester. If I could improve my skills and just be a school teacher until I finish my Master's, I'd be happy. It was my high school nurse that made me want to a nurse. She was a really good influence when I worked with her for school functions, like the blood drive.
Maybe it is like ~Mi Vida Loca~ said, maybe it's a grade thing. I felt good after my presentation on my health promotion program, today. Its the clinical skills that get me down. I don't shake or vomit when I go to clinicals, before, after, or during. In fact, I feel pretty lax when I get there. I really don't know what the problem is. I guess I think the patients are gonna throw me out the room for being incompetent. They kinda have a right to, ya know. I am really hard on myself, I think. Maybe if I wasn't so anal and perfectionist about it all I'd be ok. I'm not failing, I have a C so far, but its way lower than what I usually make. If i didn't care about Grad school I probably would be more easy going about the C. But I positively want to go to grad school so I need a good GPA to get into UT. Maybe I should try to improve and stick it out? I feel like that chicken I saw on PBS who lived for several years with no head. He died choking on his own mucous...random...I don't want to be that chicken, in other words.
Anyway....I still have to talk to my advisor, though. she pushed it back to Monday because she was tired out yesterday and said that was something she needed to have her full attention on to assess my concerns properly My Fundamentals professor saw that I was stressed (apparently) and wants me to speak to someone too. She always has a sudden urge to speak to me when I am with my advisor and then can't remember what it was about when I get there.
Specializes in Emergency Dept. Trauma. Pediatrics.
Do you have a good scope? I have trouble hearing lung sounds a lot. Even sometimes heart sounds. I have trouble feeling the pulses in the feet also.
I just wonder if all of a sudden you started getting good grades how much differently you would feel.
it's so easy to start finding all these things wrong when your not doing well with you grades and I only say this because I just went through this. Of course, your case could totally be something else and maybe you just really aren't wanting to do this. But when I was doing poorly I really convinced myself on 100 reasons why I won't make a good nurse, why I no longer like nursing, why maybe I made a mistake and so on.
I'm sorry you feel that way about your schooling... I think you should stick with it. If you didn't want to stick with it deep down, you would have already quit. You just need someone to tell you... YOU CAN DO IT!!! It may seem hard at first, and I am still doing my pre-req's so I don't have firsthand knowledge, but I will tell you some days I feel like I won't even be able to finish my A & P class and never even get to apply to nursing school.
PS. The only reason I responded... I too have the losing all your teeth dream. I get it recurrently, on and off for about 5 years now. I thought I was having it because I was dating a dentist when the dreams started. *LOL*
I had one dentist tell me it meant death, but your explanation is much better. (no deaths occurred around the time of my dreams) Where did you find that dream explanation?
Whatever you choose, you'll feel better once you've made a decision!!!
I'm sorry you feel that way about your schooling... I think you should stick with it. If you didn't want to stick with it deep down, you would have already quit. You just need someone to tell you... YOU CAN DO IT!!! It may seem hard at first, and I am still doing my pre-req's so I don't have firsthand knowledge, but I will tell you some days I feel like I won't even be able to finish my A & P class and never even get to apply to nursing school.
PS. The only reason I responded... I too have the losing all your teeth dream. I get it recurrently, on and off for about 5 years now. I thought I was having it because I was dating a dentist when the dreams started. *LOL*
I had one dentist tell me it meant death, but your explanation is much better. (no deaths occurred around the time of my dreams) Where did you find that dream explanation?
Whatever you choose, you'll feel better once you've made a decision!!!
Good luck,
Amber
That's true. Now I'm thinking about staying. I feel oh so confused. The thing that is keeping me going is that once I finish, get the degree, and get the license I will have pretty much a myriad of opportunities and roles to partake. That drew me to nursing, as well. I don't have to stick in the hospital if I don't want to. Instead I could work in a community clinic. I sort of grew up in those places anyway, so I would like to give back to others getting accessible health care like I did. Of course, hospitals pay more, but I'll take a moderate pay cut to be happy. Hopefully, I should be able to fine-tune my skills just as much.
I got the interpretation from Yahoo! Answers. Not the best source, I know, but it made sense. Falling teeth in dreams have other meanings, as well, so it is kind of subjective. I thought about teeth so much I did my assignment for a health promotion program about a Community Dental Clinic. I was like the only person in the class to do that because I'm so obsessed with teeth. Who cares if it's not medical? Teeth is what people see when they look at you!!!!
Even when I did read all the time (I don't anymore because I don't have the initiative to), I always wondered how I would put it into practice. The clinical portion has always seemed scary to me. It doesn't help that program is disorganized, with teachers telling you to go "Google" an answer and having miscommunication amongst themselves and with students. It's super expensive on top of that! I don't know what they're asking anymore. Now I don't care. I'm going to go crawl in a hole now. OK, not really, because I have to muster up some motivation to do this paper.
My Fundamentals professor saw that I was stressed (apparently) and wants me to speak to someone too. She always has a sudden urge to speak to me when I am with my advisor and then can't remember what it was about when I get there..thumb.jpg.5aa4d55557c0228e31b94de19666bbbb.jpg){kind=small}
mmt4
127 Posts
I can't tell you to do it or not, but I want to share my story - btw I am not a nurse, nor am I a nursing student right now. I am re-taking my pre-reqs and keeping my options open because at this point in my life, I have to be flexible.
OK, here is my story (oh my, please bear with me, this gets long):
Waaaaay back in undergrad, in the early 90s, I was pre-BSN. I had some good friends in the same classes as me, and the very next semester I was going to apply, along with them, to the program. I would have gotten in right along with them, had I not changed my mind. Due to pressure from my family b/c I was getting straight As in my nursing pre-reqs (both the sciences and the nursing (patho, growth and development, etc..)) I changed my major to pre-med. Its not that I disliked nursing at that point, it is because I was being told I "could do better". I ended up majoring in community health education, which was really interesting. Public health interests me. I had a twinge of doubt when in my second to last semester, I heard one of my former pre-BSN classmates had just graduated and was working at a local hospital in the area of Nursing she always had wanted. Still, I loved what I was learning - problem was when I graduated and got married and moved for my husband's job, I found the health system in my new area hired nurses to do the community health outreach and education. I tried for a few mos to find a job besides temp office work, to no avail.
I decided at that point my best option was to go back and finish that nursing degree. Of course,I was no longer near my old school, so I checked out my options in my new town. My options were an almost-free LPN program at the local public vocational college that not only started that following month, but gave me full credit for my prerequisites, so I was to start right in on fundamentals and dosage calculations, which was the first of four professional quarters, or to try to get into the BSN program at the local college, which would have cost more, taken longer, and may have required additional prerequisites.
I went ahead and enrolled in the LPN program - my student loans were starting to come due and I could defer them and not incur additional ones. I figured I could bridge later on, and maybe this would be enough to help boost my health ed degree into something employable for the time being.
I started the program, did very well academically, and made it through skills checkoffs and on to the second half of the quarter, where we did clinicals at a nearby nursing home. I fumbled, was very nervous, discovered charting was much harder when it was actually a real patient and real chart versus practice homework, and felt like my time management was terrible. You know the feeling like the hands on the clock are spinning? It was stressful but those of us in the class who were not already CNAs were all kind of stressed. We tried to lean on each other.
Unfortunately, we had winter break between Q1 and Q2 and my stress, fear, waning confidence, and doubt got to me over the break. I had myself convinced that work was always going to be this stressful, or worse, that my skills sucked and were not getting better, and that the sweat I was soaked in at the end of each nursing home clinical day from not just physical work, but moreso from mental anxiety, was going to be a constant companion. I convinced myself that I would be absolutely miserable once I graduated. We went to visit family, and by the time we got off the plane for the 3 hour drive home at the end, I was in tears because I had gotten myself so worked up over it.
The first day back of Q2, we went as a class to the bookstore and got our Med-Surg books and then got briefed by the program instructors on what to expect the next day at the hospital. I was actually feeling OK because I was back with my classmates and new textbooks always put me in a good mood, but that only lasted a couple of hours into the following day at the hospital. After tours and orientation and a snack, our instructors gave us random stuff to do - I was to go take vitals for some rooms on the floor. The horrible feelings I had over break took over. My confidence plummeted, I got extremely shy, and could not even take a blood pressure. The only thing that saved me was my partner was a phlebotomist and used to being in and out of patient rooms and she could tell I was nervous and tried to keep me calm.
The next day, I went in and dropped out. My instructors did not try to help me figure out whether it was jitters I would get over - they just signed the paper for me to take to the advising office. By noon, I was enrolled in a different program that I just randomly picked because the advisor convinced me to stay and not waste the work I had already put in. I felt horrible guilt and relief at the same time. The relief did not last as long as the guilt and doubt.
I know this was a TON of personal detail - thanks for reading - and now, this is how I feel about all that I did and chose:
To this day, I still wish I had stayed in that BSN program. Barring that, I wish I had talked to someone who would have encouraged me to stick it out in the LPN program. I wish I had gotten the chance to talk to someone in the class ahead of ours, in Q4 (which was maternal-child health and many students enjoyed), who had been in my shoes recently, and could have helped me sort out whether I was just freaking out or whether it was more serious than that.
I felt like such a quitter, and, while it has been 12 years, and it does not come up in my mind every day, I still feel like one. It colors the choices I make in my education. I second-guess myself all of the time now. I wonder if, since I did it once, if it gets tough again, will I quit?
I urge you to give yourself the time you are talking about (sticking it out til the end of the semester) and try to do your best, despite how you currently feel.
I feel for you. I do. Its a terrible feeling to have.
There are other options though - and while you are sticking out this semester, you can have time to research them and make an intelligent decision so you aren't just running from something, but running to something else, if you decide to change your major.