After enrolling into nursing school and participating in a few clinical rounds, you might start to feel overwhelmed. That’s a normal reaction to a career as challenging as nursing. Here, we want to offer a few words of advice so you’ll stay in school and gain employment in one of the nation’s most rewarding careers.
Attending nursing school can be as stressful as working as a nurse. In fact, some of the activities in your nursing education require you to act as a nurse, and the more classes you take, the more activities you’ll have. Don’t make the mistake some beginning students make and project your stresses home to your family. Set aside some time to “decompress” and acknowledge the end of your school time and the beginning of family time. Some appropriate activities for decompression include meditating, listening to music, jogging, or writing in a journal. Anything that can switch your mind from student mode to family mode will work just fine.
Breaks are underrated in this country. We really don’t know why more people don’t exercise them. To remain motivated, you must take a break from your studies on the weekends and during regular school holidays. The benefits are plenty. Breaks give nursing students fresh perspectives and new reasons to return to their studies, for example. Another benefit behind the success of breaks is that they provide a sense of accomplishment. At the end of a long study session, specific lessons and skills are learned and gained. Breaks give the mind an opportunity to digest those lessons and skills.
Although you may be excited about becoming a nurse (and we certainly can’t criticize you for that!), you’ll do yourself a great disservice by making your entire life about nursing. No obsession, however helpful to others, is good for the mind or the body. The human brain craves variety and it enjoys a break from the routine. That’s why the body sleeps. And that’s why you must give your mind a chance to think about something else once in a while. Take up painting, exercising, or music. Take up anything that prevents your mind from obsessing with your nursing education.
Participate in a few of the student nursing associations we discuss. Remember that nursing is a team effort. When you find employment as a nurse in a hospital or clinic, you’ll work alongside and assist as many as 10 – 12 other nurses. You can’t nurse alone, so there’s no reason to assume you need to learn nursing alone either. Talk about some problems you might have and ask other students, teachers, and working nurses how they’ve solved similar dilemmas.
It’s impossible to predict how well you’ll do in nursing school, and specifying which problems you’re likely to experience are next to impossible. The important thing to know is there are helpful channels available. Take advantage of them!
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