wondering if I should become a nurse...

[msuCON]

As or right now I am a 2nd semester nursing student who is retaking her medsurg course. the paperwork that is involved has been giving me worlds of trouble and despite the endless amounts of feedback and tutoring etc, its like my brain doesn't think how they want it to. I had my mid-semester eval with two instructors to talk about my situation. since i am still failing my second time around. I havent given up on myself so far and i don't want to either i would hate to waste all my hard work so far.

What I am wondering is how do I know if I should become a nurse truly...? i talked with one of the staff about my paperwork and and then she said well it sounds like your heart is in it to succeed but why do you want to become a nurse?

Right now and ever since my last semester i think i have been struggling with that very question. When they major i had originally chosen closed and i was in limbo i felt like i needed to chose something and nursing was the next best thing and im scared i did it as a back up plan. it would also allow me to have a career in the military as a nurse and joining the military is something ive wanted to do for a long time.

I know this is a question only i can answer and im having second thoughts.. what are some moments that others had that made them realize nursing was meant for them?? I'm trying to answer this question before i continue with something im not truly committed to...feeling lost and unsure of myself..

[Double-Helix, BSN, RN]

I started college thinking I was going into physical therapy until I just realized that I wanted to be a nurse. Once I started clinicals, I knew there wasn't anything else that I wanted to go with my career.

I suppose you need to ask yourself if you still want to be a nurse. Do you still enjoy clinicals? How do you feel when you think about being a real RN? Excited? Proud? or Anxious? Regretful? Is there another job that you would rather be doing?

If you still have a desire in your heart to be a nurse, then I think you should stick with it. If becoming a nurse isn't your passion anymore, there it's perfectly okay to pursue another major now.

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

i always wanted to be a physician when i was a kid, because i had siblings with chronic health conditions that dominated a lot of our family's life and we saw a lot of them. i loved science and read voraciously. when i got old enough to have a summer job in the local hospital, i was very surprised to see that i liked what nurses did with people a whole lot more than what physicians did with them, so i changed my focus. when people heard i was considering nursing school, they said, "oh, you're so smart, you should go to medical school," and my oppositional disorder made me say, preciently as it turns out, "they need smart nurses too."

if you took nursing as sort of a back-up with no real understanding of what it's all about or whether you like it, now is the time to find out you don't like it, not after you have invested mucho dinero and time you can't get back. if you are interested in the military, enlist. of course you'll be able to enlist at a higher rank if you are an rn already, and maybe they won't even take you if you aren't (i have zero knowledge of this-- go ask on the military nurses board here for better insight on that). or maybe they'll take you and send you to nursing school. or maybe you'll find they offer training in something else that really make you light up.