alright, i'll start this off by saying that i didn't start school until i was 21. i never wanted to go to school, and as soon as i turned 18 i left florida and went to live in a tent in skagway, ak. i came back to tallahassee, fl and started school only because my family did not approve of the "transient" lifestyle i was living. i worked at a gym making $14.20 an hour i personally loved it and haven't really been happy since. i came here to make minimum wage and i started going to school working towards an aa in anthropology - i love cultures, i love being outdoors, and if i could move to some remote island to study some remote tribe i would. after completing about 50% of the requirements towards my aa i decided that my dream job would not be feasible unless i got a masters degree. it made more sense to me at the time that i would be able to find a "real" job in the "real" world if i entered a specialized program, which brought me to nursing.
i do not want to be a nurse at all. i am not a people person, i do not want to take care of people, and i prefer to stay detached from society as much as possible, but the want to please my family overtook my own wants, as it seems to for a lot of people. last semester i did fine with three classes and ended my term with a 3.0 gpa. this semester i am taking anthropology & physiology, science of nutrition, psychology, and mathematics for liberal arts. i am doing fine in the math class, but everything else seems to steadily just flow downhill. i have not missed a single psychology class nor missed any assignments and haven't recieved anything less than a 75 on any assignments and somehow my grade only factors out to a 66%. in nutrition i have no idea what the eff is going on, i cannot seem to grasp anything no matter how much i study, how many practice quizzes i do, or how many stupid little flashcards i make myself - everything is to no avail and i have a 55% in that class. i don't even want to express what's going on in the anthropology class. it's embarrassing.
i know i'm smart, but i am incredibly discouraged. almost everyday i have to go have myself a good cry in the bathroom. i'm pretty sure my teachers all think i'm some depressive underachiever that doesn't deserve a second glance, i almost thoroughly believe this because none of them seem to want to spend time speaking with me after class and they rarely answer my emails.
it has also been made clear that if one does not make a c or higher in a class that they will not even be considered for the program if they apply. i can't cancel out a grade unless it's an f... so a d pretty much ensures that i'm working towards nothing.
so i guess my questions are should i quit now? does everyone who is a nurse want to be a nurse? does it get easier? and how do you tell your parents you're quitting their dream?!
that last one is just wishing for an easy button...
What I get from reading your post is that you are indeed an intelligent person and are very capable of getting probably better grades than you're even getting now. I believe you can do anything you want and be anything you want. Therein lies the problem, I think, in this case. The problem is you are doing what others want you to do rather than following your heart and nurturing your passion. You probably don't understand nutrition because your heart is just not in it. I truly believe a person can never be fulfilled and happy in trying to live others' dreams. Find your passion and live your own life. Its ok if it takes a while to figure out what that is, but in the meantime, do whatever you want to do, do what makes you happy, not what your family thinks you should do. They will still love you even they don't understand you and that is ok. Good luck!
Quit ASAP. No need to continue doing something you dont even have a passion for. Go after something you want to do in life. Its YOUR life and YOU CONTROL YOUR LIFE. Just simply tell your parents you dont have any desire to be a nurse. Tell them what you really want to do. If they dont like it then tough. Its their problem not yours.
you can do travel nursing, see the country without emotional ties or politics that come with staying in one place too long. You will have money to afford studying a tribe or hiking the amazon one day....my advice is slow down. Maybe take one class at a time and do really well in each one, join study groups. Talking out loud to myself, other people or my dog while explaining concepts or processes really helps me learn it! I think you may be discouraged and want to give up - I have been there too, but I kept going and those phases come and go. Again...maybe you should slow down a little, but dont quit.
What does that have to do with it? Filipinos are just as capable of standing up for themselves with their parents as anyone else. But then I don't have Filipino parents.
When I was in my 20s I lived life to the fullest! My family didnt approve and I was failing in school. I had no focus and didnt care about grades. I WISH I would have been smart enough to stop signing up for classes and racking up student loans. I didnt finish school at that time for many different reasons, no job, no money, having fun, being stressed out, family deaths, family crises ... you name it!
Fast forward about 15 years. A happy accidental part time job landed me in the right place and I found out what I LOVED about the medical field. I went back to school and was able to achieve As! The bad news is my overall GPA is like a 2.5, but I didnt take any pre-reqs until I returned to school and they are all As.
I always tell 20 somethings just finish school. It is so much harder to complete when you are older with more responsibilites. However if you dont even want to be in school right now don't waste your money. If you want to return at some point you will figure it out. We can't all have families that support our dreams and if you truly do not like nursing.... trust me ... dont do it!
Think about it... how would you like to be so utterly sick and being taken care of by someone that hates what they are doing? There is enough of that out there! But the other posts are right. There are other options besides bedside care. Statistical research, case studies, ... and yes if you do become a nurse, and are experienced, the travel/contract RNs have a great time!
Sorry for the long response! I just felt like I could relate.
I am from Tallahassee (Go Noles! or rather Go Trojans!!). And I moved to Alaska when I was in my early 20's. I didn't live in a tent though. I just had my little log cabin, my outhouse and my sled dogs. (Ah, those were the days...)
I don't want to be a nurse either. But I'm still pursuing it because I followed my dream for 20 years and without a degree I've gotten next to nowhere. In Alaska I became a licensed vet tech through on-the-job experience because there isn't a vet tech school up there. But my license, without a degree backing it up, didn't transfer when I moved back to the lower 48. So, I went from a highly respescted employee with 15 years of senority and a decent salary to a veterinary hospital where I made as much as the assistant they hired fresh off the street and had no experience. We made the same wage, but while she stood idle watching without the first clue as to what to do, I was gloving up to assist in surgery and performing CPR when the hit-by-car cat crashed on the operating table.
That's when I realized I needed to get a degree. And nursing made sense because I feel really comfortable in the medical setting. I should have been a vet. But that window of opportunity has closed. Nursing isn't my dream, but it'll do. I'll be great at it, and my patients will really like me.
What I'm saying is...nursing is a good career choice, with lots of flexability in what you will ultimately do for a job. (Alaska loves their medical professionals, by the way. Especially in the bush/villages.) There are career opportunities for nurses to work in cultural settings where they do very little hands on medical care. But if you don't think anything medical or clinical is what you would like, you need to quit. Quit that program, but DO NOT quit school! Keep looking until you find something that suits you. And if you can't seem to find your niche, still graduate, even with a liberal arts degree. Trust me, you won't regret being able to say that you do have a college degree (where I'm embarassed to say I don't).
As for your family. It'll be tough, but you've got to be honest with them. Medical careers are not for everyone. Even they should be able to comprehend that. If you go to them saying, I can't do nursing, but I'm still working on my degree in ______, I'm sure they'll understand.
Also, you should consider dropping this semester and getting yourself motivated to start again next semester. There's no point in letting this identity crisis tank your GPA. You might actually need a great GPA one day.
I agree with you , this sounds wrong for you, there is something else you should be doing.. but is there something else going on as well? Are you depressed? The way you describe the teachers not liking you or talking to you sounds like it could have to do with your perception. I think you need to talk to a professional, maybe they can help figure out if this is all about your future career or if there is something else as well. (I am just pre-nursing , not a nurse, fyi)
I would say that yes.......you need to quit. I believe a large part of your poor grades directly relates to your lack of desire. If you aren't doing well in your classes at this point, it's only going to get worse as you continue on.
Don't make a career out of something you don't want to do. I watched my dad do that; granted, he didn't go to college, but he worked in the same place right out of high school that he does now. He hates his job, and it has made him miserable for years. It's no way to live your life.
"i do not want to be a nurse at all. i am not a people person, i do not want to take care of people, and i prefer to stay detached from society as much as possible,"
enough said, nursing is not for you. i'm not trying to be mean but i would not want a person taking care of me or my love ones that feels this way; would you? it is nothing wrong with you walking away for something that you really dont want to do. tell you family how you feel and let them deal with their issues. do what makes you happy. good luck...
QUIT. NOW. You're failing anyway because deep down you really don't care to learn the material. You come off to me as sounding like a spoiled, whiny, entitled brat. If you love "culture" so much, you should open your eyes and realize that there are MILLIONS of people in the world who lack the opportunity to go to school and make something of themselves. They don't even have the privilege of finding "happiness"... they just want an opportunity to learn, make a living, and provide a future for themselves and their families. I'm not saying that you have to love nursing because of this. I'm just saying that you should try to look on the bright side of your college "career." LIFE COULD BE WORSE.
That said, it sucks that your parents are making you do something you don't want, but if they're the ones footing the bill, then it's their call. Sorry, that's life. Only spoiled kids with entitlement attitudes would disagree. If you don't like it, quit nursing school, move out, and fund your own education. Lots of people make it happen. It's really, really, really hard, but it can happen if you want it enough. If you do happen to pursue Anthro, don't ***** when you realize that your degree is about as useful as a screendoor on a submarine.
Please also realize that there is someone out there who is willing to work much harder and wants your space a million times more than you. Tell your parents that it's unfair to them for you to take that person's place. Plus, I would never want a nurse who didn't give a crap "taking care" of me. You know what that attitude leads to? Abuse, negligence, stupid mistakes, and lawsuits. If you don't want the job, then the job doesn't want you either.
Plus, the market is full of nurses who DO care but can't find work. The longer you stay, the more you deny one of these hardworkers their opportunity. Your parents are only doing what they think would be the best for you - and I guess that means ensuring that their child is able to compete in a GLOBAL economy. (That's right, we're not competing amongst ourselves anymore, but against the rest of the world who wants a shot at our resources. This trend will only become more definite in the decades to come.)
FYI, this may be unrelated... but I know a dozen people right now who "followed their dreams," and now they're broke, moving back home, being a pain in their parents' asses, living off credit cards, ruining their credit cuz they can't pay off their loans, eating ****** food (and consequently messing up their health), and/or basically effing up their lives before it really begins. They drive crappy cars that break down all the time because they never have the money to maintain or fix. They get buried in tickets and fines because these problems eventually lead to issues that prevent them from legalizing their vehicles. And their dating pool is generally limited to people who are in the same boat as they are because generally brighter people don't like to get involved with someone who's broke, crappy with money, in ridiculous debt, and/or was bad enough at making life decisions that they though a Creative Writing degree was a good idea.
That gym job or whatever works now, but it's not going to work when you're in your 30s, 40s, and 50s. It's not going to work if you need to have extra money set aside to fix the normal f-ups of life - illness, repairs, bad people effing you over, etc. YOU are not special. YOU are not a unique snowflake. Unless you have a special skill or know-how that sets you apart from the rest - or at least puts you up on a higher shelf - there will ALWAYS be a hundred other unskilled people willing to do your unskilled job for lesser pay. Especially since the market is FULL of people who got crappy degrees, can't find work, and need crappy jobs to sustain themselves.
College is worthless unless you're going to get a marketable degree. If you want to study Anthro, English, art, philosophy, history, etc. you're pretty much burying yourself in debt forever. Even if you go on to get your Masters, you've still got to pay for the loans... plus interest. Assuming that your Masters degree got you a job so that you can pay them. And man, let me tell you, you miss enough payments and soon you'll be buried in late fees and interest. Not only will the bank hound you at all hours of the day, but if you do somehow manage to get the money to make payments, you'll only be covering the interest that got backed up...not the principal.
It makes sense to take out loans for college if your degree gets you a job that gives you a nice return on your investment so that you have enough to pay your loans, save up, and live reasonably and enjoyably. But if you get a unmarketable degree, it's rare that you're going to find a job that will pay you enough to pay back your loans and still have enough left over to cover bills, much less save for an emergency. Sometimes all it takes is for one bad situation to happen before people find themselves in major money problems. And then who will you turn to for help? That's right - your parents, the people who wanted you to study something worthwhile to begin with so that you could avoid this mess.
My suggestion is to test the waters, step out of your comfort zone, and take classes at community college until you find something that interests you that also doesn't happen to be completely worthless. Maybe look into a field that's booming right now - economics, technology, search engine analytics, engineering, something to do with the internet, etc. and see if you are interested in any of it. Or go to a trade school and learn a skill, like cooking, pastry making, iron working, etc. Or come up with a great idea and start your own business/website.
Whatever you do, don't go to college and get a useless degree. It's not worth the headache after graduation.
florence66
26 Posts
What I get from reading your post is that you are indeed an intelligent person and are very capable of getting probably better grades than you're even getting now. I believe you can do anything you want and be anything you want. Therein lies the problem, I think, in this case. The problem is you are doing what others want you to do rather than following your heart and nurturing your passion. You probably don't understand nutrition because your heart is just not in it. I truly believe a person can never be fulfilled and happy in trying to live others' dreams. Find your passion and live your own life. Its ok if it takes a while to figure out what that is, but in the meantime, do whatever you want to do, do what makes you happy, not what your family thinks you should do. They will still love you even they don't understand you and that is ok. Good luck!