Nursing school is all about attitude

Nursing school is all about testing you and your limits. Everything from your patience, your skills, your knowledge, your aptitude and your sheer ‘will’ gets tested. Each day, each week, each month, each semester will bring on a new set of challenges. Some greater than others, but all are important to the greater picture.

I personally feel my entry level nursing education was a form of ‘combat’ training. You either learned how to swim or your drowned. You went from not knowing what the ‘water’ was, to jumping in the water head first, to eventually swimming with and against the current with some panache.

Through my coursework I saw many students fail, saw many students give up, and saw many student get beat. School in itself was hard enough with the whirlwind of information in such a short amount of time. But tack on your life outside of school, and things started getting a little rough around the edges.

It was all about the juggle wasn’t it?

In my humble opinion surviving (and thriving) as a green-behind the ears student nurse was all about attitude. You either chose to beat the odds, or the odds beat you. The no-quit attitude. The kick-@ss-and-take-names attitude. The I-will-not-be-beaten attitude. The you-can’t-scare-me attitude. Call it what you will, but in the end the only way you were to succeed was to decide you would not fail. Period. No excuses.

I don’t think there is a nurse out there that won’t agree with this philosophy in one way shape or form. All of us had to endure some sort of challenge or challenges to a varying degree. Those of us who are nurses today can attest that the attitude that will get you through nursing school is the same attitude we still all possess. And it’s this attitude, in my humble opinion, that truly ‘makes’ a nurse.