Oh, future nursing students

Dear future nursing students,
I know you are all so excited to be entering the oh-so-wonderful school of nursing this upcoming semester. Only a month away! You're attending your 3 days of God-awful orientation, scheduling your classes, and ordering those precious starch white uniforms. As you gather all of your cute nursing school belongings and have totes monogrammed with "UAB Nursing" on them, the current nursing students and all shaking their heads at you. Maybe some of us are even laughing. Because we know, unfortunately, this newness and excitement will soon wear off. And very soon it will be! You will quickly discover that most of your professors are in cahoots with the devil. You will fall asleep with those expensive nursing books in your bed. You will study for a quiz coming up the next day, only to fail it miserably because nothing on that quiz was even in your book. You will form a very close friendship with at least one person in your class...not that you have much of a choice in this matter. After all, you have to see that person half naked by the end of the semester to do your physical assessment on them. And about that physical assessment - the teachers will practically do anything to fail you. And failing simply means scoring below a 90%. Yes, in cahoots with the devil, indeed. You will meet your first patient and be petrified that you will break him or her, and think that your first day has to be the worst patient you could ever imagine. Ha. However, you will discover that your patients get harder and more difficult with much more complex situations as your semester progresses. You will question yourself and your intentions of becoming a nurse. Fear not- this is normal. You will also have some of your peers drop out because they spend more time taking pictures of themselves in their uniform than actually doing work. You will probably fail the medical dosage calculations test because the teachers themselves do not know how to perform simple math. You will cry. You will be irritated with at least 10 e-mails per day that essentially say nothing, but somehow ends up in giving you more work to do. You will cry, again. I hope you remember your anatomy and physiology. You're going to regret not coming to ES and asking for my help when you are learning how to test cranial nerves on patients. And we will get the last laugh. Enjoy your holiday break. I know you won't listen to me and just pretend like you will be the best nursing student ever. That's ok. You will see.

Just remember, this too shall pass. And if it doesn't, well...that sucks.