Six things they don’t tell you before you start nursing school…

1)    It’s possible that you will spend the rest of your career putting moisturizer on your hands. Especially after you realize that constantly washing your hands makes them crack, and putting Purell on cracked hands makes you scream a little.

2)    When you get a bad midwinter cough and find yourself coughing stuff up in the morning, you’ll also be examining it and wondering exactly what part of your respiratory tract it originated from, noting the color, consistency, etc.

3)    You’ll always be aware of it when a nurse is trying to subtly count your respirations and you will occasionally end up hypoventilating in the doctor’s office while trying to “breathe normally.”

4)    After a semester of practicing head-to-toe assessments on your classmates, you’ll have gained a lot of knowledge about each other. Like who has an outie, who has tattoos on their back, and whose ileocecal valve makes the craziest noises after lunch.

5)    After hanging out with other nursing students all of the time, your ability to discern what constitutes appropriate mealtime conversation will be shot. You will find this out the hard way at your cousin’s wedding.

6)    Remember 5 o’clock Happy Hour? Yeah, me either.