This statement may seem a little obvious, considering I am currently in nursing school. To me, though, it is very significant. I have never been in a place where I truly believed this. Now, here I am, nearly a month into the semester and that statement couldn’t be truer.

I want to focus a little bit on the times I doubted myself so much, since it tells the story of  where I came from. As is with many areas of my life, mental illness has greatly affected the possibility of me becoming a nurse along with decreasing my confidence that I ever could reach my dream. I have been in that dark place for much of my college career. I wondered if it was even worth trying when I saw little hope for anything, especially myself becoming anything worthwhile. My mind constantly plays tricks on me with the distorted thinking. It may be more difficult to reach my dreams, but that doesn’t mean impossible or that I am wrong for the job. In general being sick has brought low motivation, a lack of caring about what happens to me, isolation, and my life as a whole unraveling. I become a sad shell of a person when I’m far into my illnesses.

Another major contributor to doubting is my academic performance. I’ve had struggles three out of four semesters at Calvin. Fall 2015 ended in me leaving early for residential, spring 2016 was actually pretty good, fall 2016 brought plenty of hard times but ended up better than it could have been, and spring 2017 nearly disqualified me from staying in the nursing program since my GPA was so low. I never ever had a hard time in school until my ED became more severe. I never imagined I would be that person who was okay with C’s because anything was better than actually failing. Sadly, that has been my life the past couple years, especially this past spring. It’s hard to believe I managed to pull this all off.

I’m beyond thankful that I’ve fought so hard to get into nursing. I have persevered through it all. In a way, I think this struggle has made me stronger. There is nothing I want more than being able to say I made it as a nurse. In less than 2 years that will be my reality. I don’t think I have had so much hope for the future as I do now.

I want to end this with evaluating how different aspects of who I am will play into learning how to be the best nurse possible. I have plenty that has to change but also so many traits that will help in nursing. I want to be able to look back at this list and see how much I’ve grown.

Strengths

• my experience as a patient will allow me to better understand what patients are going through
• I am compassionate and truly care
• my faith allows me to carry hope and see the good in others
• I love learning
• my medical knowledge and interest in all things medical
• I want to be the person that others can come to and lean on in hard times
• medical math and terminology knowledge

Things I need to work on

• my extreme fear and avoidance of vomit at all costs
• I am still pretty shy
• I tend to feel awkward in different situations
• I have to practice therapeutic communication, namely slowing down and taking in what the other person is saying v feeling rushed
• overall, just a TON to learn, but that’s okay!

I’ll probably continue to update this as I think of new things^^