This title was originally not intended to be related to Meek Mill’s song; however, I am taking the opportunity to make a connection with this line in his song “Dreams and Nightmares”:

See my dreams unfold, nightmares come true.

As corny as this may sound, I find that this line accurately describes my current personal situation. For the past few months, I have been increasingly losing interest in my nursing education and feeling very lost. I used to be so excited about the idea of me becoming a nurse when I first got to college and thought that I had my whole life planned out..but fast forward almost three years later and I am finding myself struggling to muster enough motivation for my classes, let alone my twelve hour weekly clinical experiences. At times, it almost feels like I am self sabotaging myself by staying in my major and putting myself through something that I do not enjoy. What I specifically do not like about my major is that it concentrates on bedside nursing, which is what I found that I do not want to do at all. I experienced numerous break downs throughout my fall junior semester (I am currently in my spring junior semester) because I thought that my only option post graduation was being a nurse; however, after doing a LOT of research, I found different career options that I think I could enjoy that do not involve bedside care (pharmaceutical sales rep, nurse navigator, school nurse to name a few). This gives me some reassurance that I can deal with the pains of nursing school and clinical for the next year, but it really does suck having to do something that makes you feel unhappy just so you can obtain a degree.

I have thought about switching my major and fantasized about dropping out when I was depressed, but since I only have one more year left I am sticking it out so I can have a well-paying job that I don’t mind doing. Now, I know that what you do for a living is supposed to be your “passion”..but I feel as though there is no job that I could be passionate about unless I got paid to travel for a living (which is kinda impossible since I am not famous and do not wish to be lol). My ultimate goal is to be able to pay off all of my student loan debt and make enough money to live a life of exploration. Not only do I want to travel to various countries around the world, but I also want to be able to live on an island and grow majority of my food. I find as I get older, I care less about wanting to live an extravagant lifestyle..I just want to be able to do simple things that make me happy and not worry about having to conform to society.

This post is therapeutic for me to write because for so long I have been under the impression that society has prescribed me an idea of the “ideal life” and what I should be doing. I have always felt like an outcast in all of my classes because all of my peers appear to be so ambitious and excited about bedside nursing. Maybe they are faking it to get by and are going through the same doubts as me, who knows. But I’m tired of pretending that I want to be a nurse and tired of feeling like I am shamed for it. I honestly wish that I would have waited for college and gotten to work/travel a bit before gathering copious student loan debt for a degree in a subject that I am not fully interested in.

For the time being, I am focusing on the positives and trying to reframe how I look at certain situations. Even though I have no desire to insert catheters and hook up IVs for a living, I am telling myself that it is valuable to learn these nursing skills just to know how to do them. I am not as stressed because I am no longer critical of myself for making mistakes since I know that I will not have to worry about doing the skills after graduation. I feel as though I am going through the motions most days but I see the light at the end of the tunnel..which I see as a win because it is a drastic improvement in comparison to my old attitude.