I’m about three weeks away from finishing my first year of nursing school.

I don’t want to jinx it, but I think I’m going to pass third quarter despite everything. The last exam absolutely wrecked me. One of those tests where you walk out feeling hollowed out, replaying every question in your head like a bad conversation you can’t let go of. Still, somehow, I’m here. Almost at the end of the year.

People always ask what nursing school is like, but I feel like everyone wants the clean version, the “what to expect” speech. Time management. Study tips. Buy the right scrubs. Drink water. Whatever. The truth is nursing school feels deeply personal. Your experience with it becomes a reflection of every weakness you have, every insecurity, every coping mechanism, every bad habit. It drags all of it to the surface.

For me, it’s been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Maybe an 8 out of 10 on the suffering scale. Not impossible, but relentless. The kind of hard that slowly reshapes your life without asking permission first.

The time commitment alone is brutal. Between class and clinicals, you can spend anywhere from 10 to 30 hours a week physically at school, then another 5 to 15 trying to study enough to survive the next exam. It’s one of those programs where they strongly advise you not to work full-time, which feels almost absurd in this economy. Most people are already drowning financially before they even open a textbook.

And the exams are different. That’s what nobody really prepares you for. Most of school teaches you to memorize information and repeat it back. Nursing school doesn’t care what you memorized if you can’t apply it. Everything becomes critical thinking, prioritization, application. You can know the material and still fail because your brain hasn’t learned how to think the way they want you to think yet. The learning curve is steep, especially if you didn’t come from healthcare or never took medical terminology beforehand.

One of the hardest parts for me hasn’t even been the academics. It’s the people.

My cohort is mostly young women in their early twenties, and the environment can feel painfully cliquey. Chatty. Gossipy. Everybody quietly analyzing everybody else. People date each other. Friend groups form fast and harden even faster. There’s this strange tension where everyone is under pressure and nobody really knows how to carry it gracefully. Some people get frustrated if you’re smarter than them. Other people get frustrated if you struggle. Everyone holds themselves, and each other, to impossible standards because we’re all terrified of failing.

There’s also this constant arguing with professors about how things are “done in the hospital.” Someone always says, “Well at my job we do it this way.” But nursing school isn’t teaching real life yet. It’s teaching you how to pass the NCLEX. There’s a difference, even if nobody wants to admit it.

I’ve mostly kept to myself. I’ve made a couple friends, but overall nursing school has been surprisingly lonely. Then again, most of my early adult life has been lonely in one way or another, so maybe I’m more used to it than I should be.

Clinicals have gotten better this quarter. First and second quarter felt painfully slow because we were mostly in long-term care facilities, but now we’re finally in acute care, and I actually enjoy it there. It feels more real. More alive. Like this might actually be where I thrive.

Still, burnout is real. We’re heading into summer after almost nine straight months of school, and I can feel myself getting lazier, more exhausted, less sharp. That last exam scared me a little because my grade dropped enough to remind me that nothing is guaranteed. I think I’ll pass. I usually pull through, even when I feel underprepared. But there’s always this lingering feeling that eventually luck runs out.

We’ve already lost around thirteen students from the cohort over these three quarters. Some failed out. Some disappeared quietly. Nursing school has a way of wearing people down until they either adapt or break.

And somehow, despite all of this, I still don’t think I’d choose differently.

I actually like school. I like being pushed, even when I hate it. I like that nursing forces me to become more disciplined, more observant, more resilient. There’s something strangely meaningful about surviving something that constantly makes you question yourself.

Maybe that’s what this year has really been about.

Not becoming a nurse yet.

Just becoming someone capable of continuing.