The Student Nurse

Hello my lovelies,

My name is Jess, I am 18 years old and an aspiring nurse. I want to document my journey and share my experiences with you and decided this is a good place for me to start.

I guess I should write a little bit about myself, I am originally from a small town in Essex, however I moved to the South East of London to a great university in order to pursue my dream of becoming a nurse. Although I am just 18 I have been through a lot so far in life and feel I can help many different people in many different ways. Although I mainly want to write about my Nursing journey, there are many topics I wish to discuss.

Let's start this with how I came to realise that I am meant to be a nurse... unfortunately I don't have the cliché story of how "I have always wanted to be a nurse since I was young" or "I love caring for people as I am a loving person". Well that last one was true but besides the point. It all started when I began to watch Casualty. Yes you read that right, the BBC show Casualty which is on every Saturday. I began to watch this all the time and thrived on the thought of being surrounded by heroes and becoming one myself. I wanted to wear the uniform, meet amazing people from around the world with all different kinds of conditions. So from this point I decided because of a TV show that this was going to be my career.

A year later I completed my GCSE's and then progressed my education to A level, I decided to do this within the sixth form at my high school. I chose to study Health and Social Care and Food Technology. An important thing to note within this post is that I hated school! I hated the teachers, the students, my lessons and the experience I had in general so it was a big decision for me to even stay on at school. I struggled a lot through the start of the first year, with anxiety and bullying that had continued from high school and considered dropping out several times. Thanks to two amazing teachers they helped me to stay focused and pursue my dream. as the year progressed work placement was due to start, this is when I really decided that I wanted to be a nurse.

For my first Placement area I chose to work in a local adult day centre, it was mainly for the elderly, a place for them to visit and socialise. I volunteered there once a week in order to make up my placement hours and I loved it, it was the best part of my week. I met some amazing people both carers and elders, they told me their story, their experiences and I loved them all to pieces, I can genuinely say that they cared and helped me just as much as I did for them. Shortly after volunteering there for a few months, they offered me a job, I was thrilled. This was my first real part time job and it was doing something I loved. I worked every weekend, had the uniform and felt like I had purpose for the first time in my life. I worked at this day centre for the remainder of my time studying and even considered taking a full time job there but with the guidance of my Health teacher I pursued the nursing career and to better myself further.

Another important note to make in this post is that my anxiety is a big part of my life and a struggle when it comes to my journey and I am certain I will talk about it often, so I apologise in advance for the people that don't believe in this mental illness.

As this post is evidently becoming very long and I may even be rambling I will leave it at this point. In my next story I will write about how I moved to university in London and how I am finding the move, my studies and experience working on the wards. Thank you to anyone that reads this and I hope you continue to read my journey.