Is Nursing for me? Really confused on how to do this...

[Eurasian]

Hey fellow nurses/soon to be nurses, can you guys give me some advice with this because I am having difficulty deciding what to do with my life. Well I just turned 23 and during and after high school I never knew what I wanted to career wise. Currently I am a server and more then ever want to be independent from my parents, not that I don't like them, they will be supporting me big time with school.

During high school I was a fairly shy person who had a hard time talking to people who I didn't know but now since i'm in my 20's I love meeting new people and Nursing seems to be a career where I get to be on my feet and "on the go", and yes I do absolutely like helping people. What I am mostly scared of is the actual schooling, I have researched about the topic much with a lot of mixed answers but many stating that the actual difficulty is not bad but the amount of information is a lot. During high school I didn't do well period, it's not because I was a dumb person but because I was very lazy and lacked dedication and during those rare times where I did focus on a subject I did well. Does that indicate whether I will succeed or not on my course of being a RN? I mean I will be giving it my all in this, since i'm mature now school will be different for me.

I feel like I am doubting myself whether I can get this done. Now if I were to pursue this career I would have to upgrade my Biology and Math to start my pre-reqs. The way I was thinking of pursing being a RN was to perhaps go for my LPN and work as a LPN while doing a RN bridge program. I am located in BC, Canada if that helps. Guys I don't know what to think really, i'm just seeking advice from people who have experience with nursing, thanks.

[douxmusique]

Start with your prereqs and see how you do. I did mediocre in high school as well and am holding out well in school right now. It all depends on your motivation. Most people dont give thenselves e ough credit.

[brownbook]

I would suspect 99% of humans entering college, planning a career, thinking about a job, feel your same doubts, whether becoming a teacher, actor, accountant, lawyer, (or the most important job of all) being a parent.

I returned to school (after a few aimless post high school years) to take my pre-nursing classes on a bet (with myself) that I would flunk chemistry, biology, etc. (I had been an unmotivated, uninterested average high school student.) I got straight A's (amazing what motivation, studying, doing homework can do!) Then found out I was almost phobic about nursing. I was scared to death during clinical's, sure I was going to kill a patient.

Sure the first few years where hard, scary, but later on I was twice nominated for nurse of the year, and now joke that I would pay to go to work I love nursing so much and love my job. (And no patient's were killed.....honestly it is REALLY REALLY hard to kill a patient!)

[nurseladybug12]

I think if you are dedicated to it and it is what you want to do, you will be successful. I would try the anatomy classes and microbiology classes and see how those go. I remember some of my classmates struggling with these and some of them were taking these classes for the 3rd time...but it just shows you their dedication and motivation to get into nursing school. I do not think the material itself in my nursing school classes was challenging, it was just a lot of information to cover in a 2 year period and did take many hours of studying, studying harder than you ever have in your life. My motivation for studying every little detail was so that when I go out there and I am taking care of real people, I know what I am doing and I will not hurt anyone. And it is very important to set aside the time to study well, your time with family and friends will have to be sacrificed and your house may not be as clean as you would like it, and you may not even have time to cook, go to the gym etc. I was a server for 5 years before nursing school and I think the time management, prioritization, and customer service skills you acquire through that have helped me tremendously as a new nurse. They say that the time management is the hardest part of being a new nurse because you need to practice it, but I think as a server you learn to deal with multiple people pulling you in 5 different directions all day long and you learn to handle it without looking frazzled. Just look at the pre-reqs as stepping stones to a bigger goal, they are not fun to do and they may seem hard and like they have nothing to do with nursing, but unfortunately that's what they make us do If you absolutely need to have a steady income during nursing school and serving tables is not cutting it, I would say do the LPN route, but if you are getting by serving tables, I think you should just go for the RN. Serving jobs are much more flexible, there's usually lots of students working in restaurants so the managers are usually lenient about workers taking time off for exams,etc. you can pick your shifts,switch when you need to, and there's so much less responsibility than LPN/RN...sometimes I wish I was a server again so that I didn't have to deal with this much responsibility, so I would enjoy it while you can.