Let's start from the beginning: getting into nursing school. Freshman year of college is supposed to be a time to rediscover yourself, meet new people that will become lifelong friends, and have crazy, stupid fun. At least that's what the movies always depict. Then again, I'm not sure if I've ever watched a movie that showed freshman year for a pre-nuring student... maybe that's why I wasn't truly prepared. Far from what my bright-eyed, bushy-tailed freshman mind had dreamt of, freshman year was 75% torture. Full disclosure, I didn't actually chart out and mathematically conclude to the 75% torture thing, so there is room for exaggeration. Nursing programs often have only a select few seats open. These seats are available to those who apply to the program and meet certain criteria, such as having a ridiculously high GPA. To lay this out as a more visual depiction, my school had AT LEAST 200 pre-nursing students my freshman year and only 40 seats were available in the nursing program. Are you starting to get the idea of where the 75% torture thing is coming from? My freshman year course load consisted of general education courses as well as an anatomy and physiology course, which all the pre-nurisng students took. This is where you met your competition and gagged where you stood in the fight for the 40 seats. These people officially became your enemies, not because they were bad people, but because they wanted the same thing as you. It is easy to say that I definitely did NOT rediscover myself freshman year. I was basically molded into being an awful person, because the pressure of being better than 159 of those pre-nurisng students was immense. I found myself conversing with those people not with the hopes and desires of becoming their friend, but rather to have a more accurate estimate of where I was in the race to the nursing program. It was some real life or death stuff going on. I can say that I did meet a lot of new people, and some did become lifelong friends. Of course, none of them were pre-nurisng students. I simply could not befriend the competition at that point. Most of my friends I met in the dorm I lived in. We did have some crazy, stupid fun, but I can't say that we went to real ragers and did wild crazy stuff like that. We did share some good laughs, inside jokes, and junk food though. Truth be told, I did not have the time for real ragers and full days wasted to recovering from major hangovers. I realistically had a short supply of time for a social life in general. Most of my life was dedicated to reading textbooks, taking notes, studying notes, and crying to get through the stress. Beyond all of this, the most agonizing part was after you put in all the time, effort, tears, sleepless nights, and parties missed you had to apply to the program and nervously wait 2 MONTHS before you found out the fate of your remaining college years. Yeah, freshman year as a pre-nursing student is not that grand, and honestly, not worthy of a blockbuster film. From where I am now, a registered nurse working my first job out of college, all of freshman year torture is valued. Although I didn't rediscover myself Eat, Pray, Love style, I did learn a lot about what I could handle and overcome. So, I guess thank you freshman year, for being a bitch.
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