Recommitting to nursing school

I am in my second year of a 3 year BSN program, and yesterday our Health Promotion instructor posed an interesting question to our class. We were discussing various change theories and ways we can go about helping our clients make decisions. She wanted us to experience what it’s like for a client to use a structured tool to make decisions, so we were asked to make a list of pros and cons for a major decision she presented to us: “You’re deciding whether to drop out of nursing school and petition the boards to allow you to take the NCLEX exam without completing your BSN degree.”  How do you make a decision like that?

I wrote out my pros and cons, and honestly, the only “pros” I could think of were all financially rooted. Sure, getting my RN now would mean I could start working as a nurse, getting paid like a nurse, getting benefits, and starting a new part of my life.  But what about not accomplishing what I’d set out to do? How would that feel? How would that feel to my family who has willingly supported me through this? And what about all that there is left to learn?

My class is at a point in our education where we start taking classes that are considered “BSN level” (like health promotion, case management, community, etc).   Our teacher went on to explain that we’re at a point in our program where it is so easy to just give in to the stress, to want to start wondering why we’re taking extra classes.

It’s been a challenging quarter for me. I have a lot going on outside of school, and a clinical that I have found challenging in a whole different way than  before. I hadn’t been considering dropping out of the program, but my motivation had gone down the drain and when this question was posed to us, I felt like she was reading my mind and knew what I needed to hear.  We all discussed it and it was interesting because we all felt very mixed up after, like our thoughts were jumbled about, but we all felt like it had affirmed our decision to be in school. It was really an interesting way to change our perspective.  It was a wake-up-call kind of assignment, the kind that makes you say, “this is what I am doing here.”

It gets tough, but we’ve all committed to this long journey to get us where we want to be. A simple assignment like this one every once in a while helps to put it all back into perspective and help us recommit to our ultimate goal.

Nursing students: Whatever type of program your in, what helps you recommit when you’re feeling down about classes?