I began highschool in 2020, this was during the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the pandemic, the first two years of my highschool experience were online. This meant that I could not experience “normal” highschool. Throughout this time, I believed that becoming a cardiologist was what I wanted to do. I was set on being able to fix other people’s hearts like I once needed fixing too. In 2022, I began my first full year of “normal” highschool. I got to attend in person classes and be around all my peers. This was the year I realized I would not get high enough grades to get into an undergraduate program geared towards helping me thrive in medical school. This was also the year that I knew I did not have the motivation to pursue a twelve plus year time frame in more education. It was not until the summer before I began grade twelve when I realized I was really interested in nursing. Over the course of my first semester of grade twelve, I had to complete a comparison report on different schools and the programs I wanted to apply to. After researching so much about what all the schools are able to provide, I was set on going to nursing school. If it was not for this report, I would not have even thought of applying to Trents BCsN program. Every school I had visited after that did not give me the “wow factor”, it was not until I visited Trent’s campus and the nursing classrooms when I realized how amazing the program was and how beautiful the campus was. This was the moment I had my heart set on going to Trent University. After a long and restless second semester of highschool, I was finally able to say I was officially a Trent University student. I was accepted to three out of the six nursing programs I applied to and am extremely grateful for Trent being my first ever offer of admission.
I have now been in Trents BCsN program for almost a full semester and it is much different than I imagined. I expected my days to be much busier than what they are. I also expected there to be many more assignments that I would have to complete but there is about half of what I thought there would be. As for readings, there are much more than I pictured but I managed to get used to them pretty quickly since if I did not I would be too far behind then to be able to catch up. In terms of living situations, I am happy that I chose to live in the apartment style residence because I now have four lovely new friends that I get to talk to everyday when I come home from my classes. It is really nice being around people who do not have the same major as I do, that way I can get a mental breather from the topics we cover in nursing classes on a day to day basis. There was a study conducted on if friendship with different majors has a more positive effect on each other and it was found that “friendships may promote STEM involvement among each other” (Hall, A. R., Nishina, A., & Lewis, J. A.,2017). Each of my roommates as well as myself have agreed that since meeting each other we have all been happier and more willing to branch out of our comfort zones socially. The lack of support socially is a large risk factor for being diagnosed with depression or anxiety (Stewart, R. C., Umar, E., Tomenson, B., & Creed, F., 2014), which is why I am extremely grateful for having them in my life during my university experience.
As I continue my nursing career over the course of the next four years, I am excited to learn new topics on how to care for patients and to watch myself evolve into a better person. I am also looking forward to getting to work with my peers in the clinical and simulation lab portion of the course so I can meet new people and better my understanding on topics amongst others.