Help! I Hate Nursing School

Picture this: You worked your butt off to be the best nursing school applicant possible. After months of stressing, applying, and waiting, you finally got into your dream nursing school. You were SO excited to start your nursing program, only to be hit with one major plot twist: You actually hate nursing school. 

If you’re finding yourself stressing and thinking things like …

• “Wow, I actually hate nursing school.”
• “I hate nursing school clinicals. Isn’t that the whole point? Should I even be a nurse?”
• “Can I become a nurse if I hate school?”

… please rest assured that you are definitely NOT alone.

We’ll chat about these specific feelings here, but I’ve also written about how to prepare for nursing school and offer some advice for your first year of nursing school elsewhere on the blog for your viewing pleasure! 

Can I become a nurse if I hate school?

The short answer is: Yes. I’ve been a nurse for a while now, and I’ve met my fair share of nurses from all walks of life. I’ve become friends with many kinds of nurses, including

• Nurses from different socioeconomic backgrounds.
• Nurses who live in different geographic regions.
• Nurses with various degrees, including ADNs, BSNs, MSNs, and APRNs.
• Nurses in completely different phases of life – whether that be married, single, widowed, or divorced.
• Nurses who worked in various settings (such as outpatient vs inpatient), in different specialties, or during different shifts.

Can you guess what absolutely every single nurse one of these nurses (and I) have had in common? We all hated nursing school. See?! It’s okay if you feel that way too!

Why I hated nursing school

If you’re wondering why these aforementioned nurses and I went on to actually become nurses if we hated nursing school so much, I’m here to tell you that it’s not that uncommon … And that hating nursing school does not mean that you can’t (or won’t) be a phenomenal, capable, brilliant nurse once you graduate from your nursing school program!

As you well know, here at That Hungry Nurse, I believe that everyone’s experience is different, and that everyone’s experience matters. Your experience might be different than mine, so all I can do is share with you my own reasons for hating nursing school.

1. Nursing students are required me to be somewhere ALL the time. Between classes and clinicals, my calendar was always full, which meant I never felt like I could just take a deep breath to regroup and refocus.
2. Taking tests (in both clinical and classroom settings) all the time to prove that I knew the information was absolutely exhausting. As was the toll that a bad grade would take on my mental health.
3. Sleep deprivation. No matter how much I tried to balance my personal stress levels, I always felt sleep deprived from the sheer volume of things going through my mind at any given moment.
4. The balancing act between trying to maintain healthy habits, family time, and friendships with my constantly fragile mental state.
5. How long it took me to figure out my learning style, how to pass my exams with ease, and how to cram weeks worth of study content into what felt like just a few hours a day.

Again, this is just my own experience. Some of you might be sitting here thinking to yourself “Um, I loved nursing school and really didn’t think it was that bad. Didn’t she write a post on this recently claiming that nursing school wasn’t that hard?” To which I would say that you are correct! I did say such things. But I can still commiserate with other nursing students, and can definitely relate to feeling like nursing school honestly kind of sucks in a lot of ways. Whether or not I think it was the “hardest few years of my life” is a very different question (and one that I would encourage you to read about here on the blog).

I share this not to scare prospective nursing students, but rather to tell you that these feelings are all normal. Please don’t give them more credit than they deserve! I am absolutely certain that you can do this – even if you don’t necessarily enjoy every minute of the process.

What if I hate nursing school clinicals? What do I do?

When I first started nursing school, I didn’t LOVE the didactic, classroom learning that much (because let’s face it, the fundamentals of nursing aren’t always covering the most riveting topics in the world). I enjoyed it enough, but there were many things I learned that I questioned the need to know, or didn’t really understand because I needed to see it applied in the real world.

Cue little old nursing school me, really looking forward to all of the things I would learn (and do) throughout my clinical experiences. Working with patients! Practicing all of my new skills! Seeing everything in the real world! I was one step closer to being a real nurse!

So imagine my surprise when I got a few weeks into my first clinical rotation and thought to myself: “Oh s***. Do I hate nursing school clinicals too?!”

What are Clinicals?

If you have no idea what I’m talking about when I differentiate between nursing school and clinicals, I apologize for the confusion! Even though clinicals are a part of nursing school, I commonly refer to “nursing school” as the classroom portion of a nursing program. When I think of clinicals, I think of the portion of nursing school that requires nursing students to work with real registered nurses in a hospital setting on various different types of units.

Clinicals are designed to get you ready to work on the floor upon graduation, and are where you are able to practice skills you’ve learned, see diseases you’ve read about in real life, and work on your critical thinking and assessment skills. Clinical experiences are incredibly valuable and eye-opening, and can really help you determine what kind of nursing you love, hate, or feel indifferent towards.

Why are clinicals important?

Some key skills you might practice at clinicals include:

• Time management (and eventually, how to manage your own patient load).
• IV skills.
• Effectively communicating with other healthcare team members (including physicians, which can be a very scary task for a new baby nurse).
• Medication administration.
• How to appropriately manage certain diseases, and what they look like in real life.
• Presentation skills. Many nursing programs make students perform hands-on demonstrations (to either their peers or their clinical instructor) or present projects during their clinical experiences.
• Safety measures you should always take when caring for patients.
• Infection prevention techniques.

Clinicals are also a great time to make connections with the nursing staff on various units (and in various hospitals). These connections (and friendships) become wildly important when it comes time to apply for jobs as a new grad. *Pro tip: Depending on what city you are planning on working in, new grad positions can be extremely competitive. Who you know matters, so make sure you treat every day at clinical like an interview … even if you know that your current clinical rotation is absolutely not where you want to work.

Are nursing school clinicals mandatory?

Unfortunately (and also very fortunately), yes. Nursing school clinicals are definitely mandatory. How many clinical hours your nursing program requires you to complete in order to graduate is actually an important factor to consider when choosing which nursing school to attend.

The requirements you must meet in order to become a nurse are set by the state in which you are trying to become a nurse. This means that if you are attending nursing school in California, the California State Board of Nursing (otherwise known as the CA BRN) determines which classes you must pass throughout nursing school AND how many clinical hours you are required to complete. If you do not complete these requirements, you will not be eligible to sit for the NCLEX-RN exam, which is the whole point of nursing school.

As you can see, nursing school clinicals are obviously very important. So if you hate them, does that mean you shouldn’t be a nurse? NO! Read on to find out why.

Common reasons why you might hate nursing school (and clinicals) … and why that’s okay.

You feel like you don’t know anything

Before you get really down on yourself and start thinking about how this means you’re going to be a terrible nurse forever, let me be brief: I’ve been a nurse for years. Some days, I still don’t feel like I know anything. As you can imagine, this means that as a new grad, I definitely didn’t feel like I knew anything. Nursing school was no different.

I tell you this to affirm that you will probably feel this way throughout nursing school, and that you will probably continue to feel this way (though it will hopefully be less and less frequent) throughout your nursing career. It is okay and 100% normal to feel like you don’t know anything. It’s actually a good thing!

Feeling like you don’t know anything (even though you do know many things, and you should give yourself more credit), is a safety mechanism. Asking for help when something is confusing or new, questioning everything you’re doing (all the time), and wanting to learn more are all qualities that excellent nurses have.

Conversely, if you ever find yourself feeling like you know everything, then

1. You’re wrong. Nobody knows everything.
2. You’re wrong. It is very dangerous to be overconfident in nursing. There is always something to learn.

Don’t forget to remind yourself that you DO know things. You ARE capable. You WILL be fine!

It’s time-consuming

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: One of the worst features of nursing school is how much time it requires. It’s hard not to feel like nursing school is your whole life. Between being expected to attend classes, actively participate in clinicals, complete assessments both inside and outside of the classroom, and somehow manage to take care of yourself, it can feel like you’re putting your real life on hold to get through your nursing school life.

My best advice when the sheer volume of things running through your brain gets too daunting is to take 5 slow, deep breaths and remind yourself that this is all temporary. One day, you will get paid for your efforts instead of having to perform all of your clinical duties without any compensation. You will one day have much more flexibility in your schedule. You can (and will) be a nurse and have a rich, fulfilling life outside of that.

Problems with other nursing staff

But I’d be lying if I said that I loved every nurse that I worked with in clinical. I’d also be lying if I said that I agreed with some of the things I saw in a clinical setting, or that I loved every single one of my nursing school professors. Like many nursing students, I found that some classes and clinicals were absolute torture to get through.

I won’t sugar coat this: When you are a nursing student, nobody cares if you like the nursing staff who are teaching you. And you shouldn’t either! Your job is to get in and get out with that degree and your highly coveted RN license.

Though I know it can be tough, not loving everyone you interact with is not unique to student nurses, and there’s a chance that it does not stop when you become a nurse. Again, this is normal and okay. Despite this, you should still always make an effort to treat everyone with kindness and respect. Unless it’s a patient safety issue, I very much support the “smile, nod, and walk away” method.

One caveat to this that I’d like to mention is abuse of any kind. If for some random reason you are being mentally, physically, or emotionally abused throughout nursing school, you should absolutely speak up and stand up for yourself. Yes, you are a nursing student. However, bullying of any kind is absolutely not okay and should not be tolerated.

Pressure from family members (and yourself)

Many nurses I’ve met throughout my nursing career are pretty hard on themselves. We care about our patients, we cant to be great at what we do, and we feel a strong emotional connection to being nurses. Though I have my days of hating nursing, I also can’t imagine what else I would be doing.

The same goes for our well-meaning family members who say things like

• “She’s the nurse of the family.”
• “Oh, have you asked Susan? She’s a nurse. She knows everything!”
• “I always wanted to be a nurse but I never got the chance to go to nursing school. Susan is doing it instead!”

Susan, if you’re reading this: It’s okay if you don’t know everything. Chill out and let the naysayers nay, girl!

The next time you think you need an A on your care plan or a 100% on your pharmacology exam, take a hard look at where that pressure is coming from. Remember, you are in SCHOOL! School is where you learn, grow, and change for the better.

Progress, not perfection.

Before you quit nursing school …

Don’t.

I can’t even explain how many times I thought I couldn’t do it, that I was too overwhelmed, or that I didn’t want to be a nurse THAT badly. This is your brain playing tricks on you when the going gets tough. So every time you start wondering if you should quit because you hate nursing school so much, read about how to survive nursing school instead!

How to survive nursing school

Survival will look different for every single person in school to get their nursing degree. Here are just a few things you can do to combat

Remember, you can always find tons of other suggestions regarding nursing school by checking out some other That Hungry Nurse nursing-related posts.

Ask yourself why you don’t like nursing school clinicals

If you’re finding that any of the reasons listed above are applying to you, know that there is a solution for each and every one of these problems.

Feel like you don’t know anything? That is fixed with time, good coworker support, more education, and giving yourself grace.

Feel like there’s never enough time in a day to get all of your clinical assignments done? Make a calendar. Schedule everything out, and share it with family and friends so everyone is on the same page. Ask for advice from others who have completed your nursing program (or any nursing program)!

Don’t love your clinical preceptors or your clinical instructor? Put your head down, complete the assignments, and find your people. There will always be one (or way more) classmates or nurses who work at your clinical site who love teaching and learning. Stick to those people like a barnacle on a boat!

Hate getting up early for nursing school clinicals? Don’t like the specialty you’re currently training in? Remind yourself that this is temporary, and everyday that you show up to that clinical site is another step closer to being done with it forever. As a side note, if you’re having the scaries when you’re driving to and from clinicals, I’ve found that podcasts are a wonderful way to take your mind off of the day.

Spend some time with your family

It’s easy to neglect time with your friends and family as you go through your nursing program. Make sure to carve out at least a few hours a week of uninterrupted family time. This can be facetiming, getting lunch or a glass of wine with a friend, or just calling your spouse to vent. Your family is forever, nursing school isn’t. You can afford 5 minutes (or 5 hours) of no-study time, I promise.

Rely on your classmates for support

Nobody understands what you’re going through during nursing school quite like your nursing school classmates. Leaning on each other for support, commiserating over how much you want to become nurses but don’t love the process of getting there, and hanging out outside of a nursing setting are all great stress relievers. I met some of my absolute favorite people in nursing school. Don’t forget that nursing school can actually be fun!

Remember why you are doing this in the first place

One of the things that really helped me when I just didn’t want to do nursing school anymore was seeking out nurses I admired – both on social media and in real life. I would look at their nursing school journey, where they are now, how they got there, and listen to any advice they had. This really helped me remember that nursing school is not forever, but being a nurse is.

It’s also very helpful to find your “why” and write it down somewhere you can see it everyday.

Know that you will take difficult tests

… And that these tests do not dictate how intelligent you are. Oftentimes, these tests don’t even determine how much you know! I’ll tell you from now that most of your NCLEX preparation will feel like you are learning how to take the exam (instead of actually being tested on the material). Failing tests does not mean you are a failure. Having to complete remediation does not mean that you’re not doing a great job. Competent nurses often fail, grow, and learn several times before you identify them as competent nurses!

I hope this clears up that you can hate nursing school and still be an incredible nurse.