When you feel like giving up

[iWish, ADN, RN]

Hello everyone!

I am in a good place right now and I'm currently on my short "summer" break in between semesters. I wanted to take some time to sort of tell my story and hopefully encourage some students who are in the same place I was almost a year ago.

To begin, I'm 25 years old (26 is not far away) and I am a single mother of 3 children ages 6, 4, and 2. My medical journey began at 18 yo when I joined the Army as a Medic. I served my term and returned to civilian life to become a RN. I went through a divorce near the end of completing my 2 years of prerequisites for the BSN program I was looking into. Thankfully, I got accepted into the school of my dreams during a hard time in my life. This school is one of the top schools in my state for nursing programs. I began the accelerated BSN program in the Fall of 2017. It was more difficult than I ever could have imagined. I was commuting an hour each way to school, had classes 5 days a week which included a 12 hour shift, and trying to balance that schedule with raising my little ones was almost impossible. I ended up failing my first nursing school exam (darn patho.) I made a 68 on that first exam and I ended up failing the course by .2 of a point. It was a set back but I wasn't about to give up everything I had worked so hard to accomplish to that point.

Since I had failed, I had to repeat the course the following spring semester while my classmates continued the program. I finished my repeat semester with flying colors and was finally able to move onto my 2nd semester in the BSN program. By this time it was summer of 2018. Here is where everything in my life crumbled. I was taking Adult 2, pharm, psych, adult 2 clinical, and psych clinical. I had 24 hrs of clinical shifts per week and I was in class all day on the days I did not have clinical. It was difficult to manage and I began to drown financially. I was on the brink of losing my house due to unforeseen circumstances (life happens.) I started slipping in my classes very close to the end of the summer semester even though I was almost finished. I had money on my mind to say the least. I went into full blown survival mode. I went to see my academic advisor to help me with a plan to continue in the program despite my financial situation at home. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do to continue and also keep a roof over my children's heads. I had to drop out of the program.

It broke me, shattered me. I had worked so hard, spent thousands of dollars, years of studying, sleepless nights for nothing! I hadn't accomplished anything yet I'd been working towards it for years. I spend the fall 2018 working. I worked as much as I could to get out of the financial burden I had found myself in that aided in wrecking my degree progress. My friends were graduating with their BSNs and I was back working another minimum wage job. It was depressing to say the least, but I wasn't going to allow myself to be defeated. I had worked too hard for too long towards this goal of becoming a RN.

While I was working, I also looked into a few other nursing programs that were ADN programs. They were cheaper, closer to home, and not as many classes in each semester. I went out on a limb and submitted my application for a local ADN program that had incredible rankings and NCLEX pass rates. Not that the BSN program didn't, they actually had 100% pass rate in their last graduating class which is amazing. I actually got accepted into their program. The game had not ended for me!

I started my first semester in the spring 2019 and ended it with a 3.6 GPA in my nursing courses. I had to retake some of the courses I had already taken, but 3 out of the 4 classes I started with were much different than the first program I was in because they lay out BSN courses differently than ADN programs. I'm now in my 2nd semester of the program right where I ended my last program and I'm doing very well. I'm in the handful of students at the top of my class. It has taken me YEARS to get to this point but what I've gotten out of all of this experience is that this degree, this life, it's not a race to the finish line. I guarentee it's taken me 3 times longer than anyone else in my class to get to where I am. This degree/career is the only thing I want to do with my life and I will never throw in the towel. I've worked towards this since 2015 when I started my first prerequisite course. I'm still working towards it and that's OKAY. It isn't a race and it's taken me much longer than the average nursing student to finish. I have a year left still, and that's okay with me too.

I will finish this and it will be worth it to me and my children who are watching so very closely. If you are reading this and you are going through something similar, I'm here to listen. I've been there and there's hope if you still want it. Thanks for reading and best of luck to all you nursing students and future nursing students. ❤️

[CamMc]

My story is similar but different, I graduated high school in 2004 and was convinced I wanted to be a dance teacher, went away to a private (read:expensive) liberal arts school, a little into my second year I realized the financial outcome would not be good (expensive school, low paying job because I wasn't that great at what I was doing). I left and decided I would stick with teaching and got a job working at the high school my mom worked at as a 1:1 aide for a student with epilepsy. It was then that I decided I really didn't want to be a teacher, but I loved helping others and the time I spent with my student in the nurses office made me realize that was the path I wanted to go on. I had always wanted to be a doctor growing up, but high school science and a love of dance stopped me. I worked really hard to get into nursing school, got a near perfect score on the NLN test and struggled a bit with some of my pre-req's (had to do anatomy a second time), but got in.

The first day of nursing school I came back to my fiance's house and he ended things with me (at the time it was just supposed to be a break, but that quickly turned into forever). I really feel that going through this made nursing school that much harder, along with at the time I had my eyes set on being a school nurse so I wasn't as interested in learning about adult health issues/needs. In my 3rd semester, I failed by two points and while I could have repeated the course I decided my heart wasn't in it, so I finished up my associates and went on to get my bachelors in Social work.

A few years after that I went on to get a master's in applied behavior analysis. I left my job in that field because the pay/stress level was so off (low pay/high stress) and got a boring office job working with online college students. I have now realized I need to go back to nursing school (partly because of a kiddo I continue to do respite work with who has started to have seizures). So I'm now 10 years past when I would have been graduating from nursing school and just getting back into it. I'm working really hard to get into a better spot financially and re-taking those pre-reqs, but stories like this give me hope that I can also succeed and do even better this time around. I'm taking the HESI on Monday, wish me luck!

[Lilypach21]

Thank you so much for sharing, this is what i want to do and it will be struggle for me to get into another program but God willing i will find one for me. I was doing amazing in my second semester until all these personal issues arose and i just couldn’t go back. Your story has really inspired me!

[iWish, ADN, RN]

14 hours ago, CamMc said:

My story is similar but different, I graduated high school in 2004 and was convinced I wanted to be a dance teacher, went away to a private (read:expensive) liberal arts school, a little into my second year I realized the financial outcome would not be good (expensive school, low paying job because I wasn't that great at what I was doing). I left and decided I would stick with teaching and got a job working at the high school my mom worked at as a 1:1 aide for a student with epilepsy. It was then that I decided I really didn't want to be a teacher, but I loved helping others and the time I spent with my student in the nurses office made me realize that was the path I wanted to go on. I had always wanted to be a doctor growing up, but high school science and a love of dance stopped me. I worked really hard to get into nursing school, got a near perfect score on the NLN test and struggled a bit with some of my pre-req's (had to do anatomy a second time), but got in.

The first day of nursing school I came back to my fiance's house and he ended things with me (at the time it was just supposed to be a break, but that quickly turned into forever). I really feel that going through this made nursing school that much harder, along with at the time I had my eyes set on being a school nurse so I wasn't as interested in learning about adult health issues/needs. In my 3rd semester, I failed by two points and while I could have repeated the course I decided my heart wasn't in it, so I finished up my associates and went on to get my bachelors in Social work.

A few years after that I went on to get a master's in applied behavior analysis. I left my job in that field because the pay/stress level was so off (low pay/high stress) and got a boring office job working with online college students. I have now realized I need to go back to nursing school (partly because of a kiddo I continue to do respite work with who has started to have seizures). So I'm now 10 years past when I would have been graduating from nursing school and just getting back into it. I'm working really hard to get into a better spot financially and re-taking those pre-reqs, but stories like this give me hope that I can also succeed and do even better this time around. I'm taking the HESI on Monday, wish me luck!

Seriously, BEST of luck to you on your Hesi exam. It seems like we share the same passion for nursing and whether it's 5 years or 10 years, it's not a race at all. I have to remind myself that on the daily. Thanks for sharing your story!

[iWish, ADN, RN]

11 hours ago, Lilypach21 said:

Thank you so much for sharing, this is what i want to do and it will be struggle for me to get into another program but God willing i will find one for me. I was doing amazing in my second semester until all these personal issues arose and i just couldn’t go back. Your story has really inspired me!

Thank you! What I did was I took about 8 weeks to "be sad" and not think about school. After that I started doing my research for other schools. Just keep in mind, it's May and there could be application deadlines approaching soon. Not to rush you, but it wouldn't hurt to look at the date of deadlines even if you don't want to apply to programs right now. The date will stay in the back of your mind. Don't give up if you want this!!! There is another way, I'm proof of that. It's not a race either, and it'll be that much more special when we reach our goal. Best of luck friend!