My Nursing Diploma School Essay (Please Read :D)

[aka640, BSN, RN]

well i'm graduating next year from uconn with a ba in allied health: health promotion sciences and applying to some nursing diploma schools. if anyone could please read my essay and review on it :) tips would be nice and whether or not it is too long. i just don't have the best gpa....2.5 gpa, hoping to get 2.6+ by end of next year and want to make other aspects of my application stand out. this one doesn't have minimum or maximum word count. here it goes:

what activities or experiences have contributed to your personal growth and have influenced your decision to become a nurse?

is nursing for me?

why do you want to be a nurse? i have been asked this question many times and have contemplated about it all through my college career. i can simply come to one conclusion, to help people, but there is more to it than that. there are so many ways to help our fellow human beings whether through donating your money or becoming a social worker. so why do i choose the path of becoming a nurse? a nurse of all things, where i would work numerous hours taking care of patient after patient, administrating meds during a 12 hour shift, and standing on my feet 99.9% of the job. even being yelled at by a couple of doctors or having to deal with colostomy bags. being a nurse is not an easy job, so why would i choose this career path?

2007, the year i had graduated from high school and got accepted into the school of nursing at uconn. i gleamed with joy during my orientation during that summer and excitement brewed within me as i anticipated attending this college. little did i know, my dreams would soon come crashing down full force and i would completely forget what i was striving to be. the following year after my first year in college, i had received a letter stating i had been removed from the school of nursing because i had not met the gpa requirements. i was lost and didn't know what to do or who to turn to. my parents would be devastated and i felt i had let down all my church members who were rooting for me. that year was the worst year of my life up to date. i had no passion to return back to school and kept reminding myself of all the mistakes i made my freshman year that i could have changed. what was i to do now? all i ever known was to go to college, finish, and get a job. how else could i become a nurse? the world seemed so dark and i was just another person lost in their misery. i watched as my friends continued on in the program without me and my grades reflected for years in how much i had lost my determination. i had to do something and something was what i did.

i had learned about the uconn infirmary hiring students for different positions from one of my friends still in the nursing school program. there was a small gleam of hope for me as i felt again that excitement i had when i began college. i would be able to work and help nurses and see firsthand some of the things they did on a daily basis. as i began my job working as a med tech at the infirmary, the inspiration i once knew came back. i loved the thought of helping students who had sprained their ankle or had a cold. even if what they needed was just an ice bag or a pair of crutches, it was pleasant to see their smiles and hear their thank you's after they were cared for. of course, not all patients were as kind as others but you did what you had to do and brush it off. you still were able to give them the help they needed and made their day seem better or at least a bit. i appreciated what the nurses did at my job, especially during spring weekend. oh i remember my shift that week, student after student after student. it was endless through the night. still, joking with the nurses over what our next case would be or how many times i had to run back and forth to the stock room made the whole event a much better experience. every time i went to work, the nurses motivated me to not lose hope and i had always had a hint of jealousy of them in how much i still wanted to become a nurse. sometimes i felt though, that jealousy made me lose my focus in my classes because i still believed no one would give me another chance because of what i had failed at accomplishing my freshman year and what my grades were turning out to be.

i would hear tales from my friends who were in the nursing school of what they learned in class or what they experienced in clinicals. i was getting angry and frustrated and trying to figure out why i'm still not meeting my potential. why was i letting my past mistakes eat me up and prevent me from moving on? the only time i ever felt comfort was during my job and being around the nurses i cherished, but it didn't make sense. why would i let my friends influence me more than the nurses who are living my dream? i should be using them for motivation instead of putting me down. things would soon change.

my senior year at uconn was the year i saw things in a whole new light. i had applied to volunteer at windham hospital that summer and had been accepted. i was there 3 hours a week and volunteering in the acu or their one day care unit. i admit i felt a bit intimidated my first day but i slowly warmed up to the nurses and other staff. most of my duties were wiping down beds, putting on the sheets, escorting patients, or being sent around the hospital for various tasks. during the times when i wasn't given anything to do, i enjoyed watching nurses tend to their patients or chit chatting with one another. windham hospital really put me into my place in telling me how much i still longed to be a nurse. one day i had asked one of the nurses on duty how is it like to be a nurse. she began to explain to me how it is a very physical job, but has its rewards. she gave me insight into the behind the scenes of nursing with all the not so fun things, but again she reminding me how just a patient's thank you can make her day. the same way i always felt while working at the infirmary. she enjoyed making her patients stay at the hospital not as horrifying as it seemed to be and giving them comfort in times of need. as she explained all these things to me, i realized that i needed to stop feeling sorry for myself. all the things she stated are what i have always felt about being a nurse. why did it take my so long to realize this? that i can't let my grades and my friends keep preventing me from pursuing my dreams. being a nurse is still not lost and as much as i had brought myself, my gpa, and my family down, i can still be a nurse, not matter how long it took. tears had slowly started streaming down my cheek and the nurse i was talking to grew frightened and thought she had scared me into not being a nurse. i told her that was not the case, but the fact that she had renewed my faith in me to keep pursuing what i always wanted to be and it is time i needed to give myself a clean slate. i knew it would be my 5th and last year at uconn and i probably shouldn't have been in college for such an extended period, but i am my own person and i know my potential. i need to keep pushing for what i want to become.

now we come back to the same old question, why do i want to be a nurse? a nurse is someone who cares for you and can put a smile on your face when you are at your worse state. a nurse is someone who is there for you when your body rejects your soul and does their best to put them back together. a nurse helps you mentally and physically and is the backbone of our healthcare system. a nurse must have compassion to bring comfort to all the her or his patients and treat them with the upmost respect and make it their duty to make their lives seem brighter. a nurse is someone i want to be. i want to be able to care of people by improving their health on a daily basis because your health is what keeps you alive. my cousin who is a nurse once told me a story of how she took care of one patient just for one day and that patient told her she was the best nurse who has ever taken care of her and she was an angel sent down from god. how wonderful it would be to hear that from someone. i want to hear that from one of my patients one day. yes, i said one of my patients because i will become a nurse. whether it takes me 7 or 15 years, i want to be a nurse because it is who i was made to be.

[determined_30]

Great job.

[aka640, BSN, RN]

Thank you!!!

[JenWork]

Excellent!

[adorable42181]

That was wonderful, you had me in tears. Just one thing in this sentence,"All the things she stated are what I have always felt about being a nurse. Why did it take my so long to realize this?" I think the my should be me. Other than that excellent essay!!!

[JenniferWilson74]

I thought your essay was touching and well written. Your determination is clear and your passion for nursing really comes through. Great job! I wouldn't change a thing, except you have what looks like a typo of sorts in the last paragraph ("A nurse must have compassion to bring comfort to all the her or his patients ..."). Good luck and let us know how it goes for you.

[33762FL]

I would cut the whole first paragraph, it's very cliche.

I would cut the second paragraph because it's too negative. Don't make yourself sound like a bad student or a 'loser' in any way, put a positive spin on things.

I'd put another sentence to lead into paragraph #3 like this: "When I was 18 and entering college, I was accepted to UCONN's nursing program. I was young and not yet mature, so unfortunately I was not able to take advantage of this opportunity because my GPA did not meet the minimum requirement.

Get rid of ALL the negative stuff about being angry, crying, letting your family down, your church down, etc.

Put a positive spin on it that you were young and immature when you entered college, but talk about how much you've grown since then and you're now a dedicated professional.

[aka640, BSN, RN]

Thank you all very much for the comments and suggesstions! I do appreciate it :) I did my best to explain how I felt and I hope it didn't sound too depressing...I just wanted to make what I felt come across in an essay. Of course I'm much happier and determined now!

Just a thought though, is there really too much negative stuff in the essay? All of it is how I really felt and what I had gone through in school and I thought it would be nice to show the nursing schools I been through a sad time but was able to go through it and have finally moved on. Is it bad to show my feelings that much?

[33762FL]

I personally thought there was way too much negative, and that it's not always a good thing to let people know exactly how you feel. Sometimes it's best to put a different spin on it. Again, it's just my opinion

[JenniferWilson74]

I can see what 3376FL is saying about the negativity. When I first started reading the essay I thought, "oh, here we go..." because it started off sounding like a sad-sob story. But I decided to give your essay a chance so I kept reading, fully expecting that I would stop after the next paragraph or so... But that is about the time your essay got interesting. This is the part where you started realizing mistakes you had made, that instead of feeling sorry for yourself you decided to pick yourself up and say, okay, this is where I am now, so how do I get to nursing from here? Your essay started off slow, but then picked up steam. The whole thing was very cathartic and by the end I was seriuosly rooting for you.

So again, I can see what 3376FL is saying, there is the "sad-sob-story" element at the beginning, and initially this was a turn off. But for me, I felt as though you were building up the story and the pay off was there at the end, making the beginning part worth muddling through, maybe even necessary. What you need to ask yourself is how is a nursing advisor going to read this, who read hundreds per semester? You also have the low GPA and you really need some damage control on that. You need the advisor to know you've changed and to be wiling to give you a second chance. I would suggest making the changes that 2276FL suggested (but save the original) and just see what you come up with. Read them both and then pick the one you think is best.

Good luck to you!

[caliotter3]

I also agree about the negativity. You can bet the reader in the position of power is quite capable of providing their own negativity to your efforts. I think that is what I did wrong in my essay for a scholarship one time. I tried to explain a bad time in my life and well, I didn't get the scholarship.

[aka640, BSN, RN]

Thanks for the advice again!! If I take all the negativity out though, how do I explain what I went through and what caused me to change? That's what I'm confused by... I'm thinking you guys are saying I should lessen by 2nd paragraph or remove it. I don't mind taking a lot of the stuff out from the second paragraph, but I'm not sure how to change my essay if I remove the whole thing. The 2nd paragraph is just the turning point of what caused everything to happen and I find it weird to take it all out instead of just taking a chunk of it. I'm going to do my best to make the 2nd paragraph as simple as possible and more emphasis on the infirmary and Windham.

I'm also taking out the stuff about being angry, crying, and letting people down because maybe that was too much emotion lol. Also is the first paragraph and fourth too bad also?