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Nursing school can be. . . well, hell. Senior year is particularly horrific. From applying for jobs, to completing your last clinicals, to finals week, to scheduling NCLEX prep, applying for your ATT, creating your resume and cover letters, preparing for interviews, scheduling and preparing for the NCLEX, sitting for boards, and actually graduating.. it can be it’s own special form of hell. Nine circles to be exact.
Have you ever read Dante’s Inferno in high school?. . well, here is our version of Dante’s Inferno . . . nursing school style.
Welcome to Nursing School Inferno
The First Circle: Limbo
Will I graduate? Will I get a job? Will I forever been stuck in this 3 years of education but no diploma or licensure abyss?
The Second Circle: Lust
People can make some pretty compromising decisions during the eleventh hour. Don’t let it be you.
The Third Circle: Gluttony
Late-night trips to Taco Bell. Early morning trips to McDonalds. Making two boxes of Kraft Mac n’ Cheese for lunch followed by 7 fun-sized Snickers and a Red Bull.
The Fourth Circle: Greed
Your roommate, whose parents are both physicians and pay her credit card, wants to go out to dinner yet again. And you deserve another Starbucks run. “Make it a Venti!” you shout! To take a break from studying you cruise Amazon for some new shoes. “I have Amazon Prime,” you think as you add another 4 items to your cart. “Checking out is so easy and fast and I can get these brand new books in just 2 days!” you rationalize to yourself as you spend the last $42 in your checking account.
The Fifth Circle: Anger
“I WILL KILL EVERYONE,” you scream as you spiral into your 4th hypertensive crisis today, as you missed yet another field in your 9th nursing job online application that has cleared all fields.
The Sixth Circle: Heresy
You commit the ultimate nursing major sin: out of self-preservation you throw your classmate under the bus during clinical. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” you whisper to your nurse BFF after you sold them out for forgetting to check a blood pressure before giving a blood pressure med.
The Seventh Circle: Violence
“I have no idea what related factors and defining characteristics to put for my nursing diagnosis of hopelessness!!!!” you scream at your laptop and throw it off of your desk, breaking the screen.
The Eight Circle: Fraud
You are writing your clinical summary from your last semester. None of your patients had anything big enough going on to write a whole paper about so you make one up from a patient from your latest Netflix binge-watching of 3 seasons of Scrubs. Plus you have a med quiz tomorrow, a research paper due Friday, and the last day to get your application in for a nurse residency program at a hospital nearby is in two days and you really don’t want to take the time to fill it out but you know you need to.
The Ninth Circle: Treachery
Now, you’re an honest nursing student. You’d never betray anyone. But it was so funny when your BFF nurse bud was trying to insert a rectal tube and the patient farted in their face and some.. errr. backsplash got on their cheek. You swore you wouldn’t tell anyone but (ha!) you just couldn’t help it. You told your other BFF nurse bud who then told the entire class.
