My last day of nursing school was last month. It was so bittersweet to say goodbye to the profession I thought I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing, but...ultimately, it was the right decision.

I have always enjoyed helping people, and when I was in high school, I decided that whatever I ended up having as a career, I knew I wanted it to be a 'helping' career. At first, I thought I might become a teacher. Teaching runs in my family, and I thought a high school english teacher may be a good fit for me. But for several reasons that I won't get in to, it just wasn't. So then I took a little bit of time off from college to figure out what else might make me happy. And I stumbled upon nursing.

I don't think I ever really sat down and said, "Yes. I'm going to become a nurse." At least, not in the beginning. It was more like, "Well...nurses help people. I'm not really sure I'm smart enough to be one, but we'll see how these pre-requisites go..." I got through all of them with above average grades, and actually began to think I might be capable of becoming a nurse.

There was one slight problem, though. I wasn't 100% sure I wanted to be a nurse. I just kept telling myself that nurses help people, I'd always have a job, and they had nice salaries with good benefit packages. And before you start judging me, I'm aware that those aren't good reasons for why you should go into the nursing profession, but I'm just being honest. And I also told myself a thousand times over that even if I wasn't sure I loved it now, I would love it once I got there.

Once first semester started, I got a bit of a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Now I was doing it, I was a nurse for real patients, and...I wasn't loving it. Or even liking it. Although the theory classes were okay and I was pulling good grades in them, I dreaded every clinical day. But because I wasn't ready to give up on it just yet, I told myself, "Well, this is just a nursing home, once you do clinicals in a hospital, you'll love it." And that is how I got through first semester.

Once second semester started, I began my labor and delivery clinical. I for sure thought that this would be something I enjoyed doing. How could you NOT enjoy watching a human life enter the world, and getting to be the person that helps this new tiny human and his or her parents through their first few days of life?

And the thing is, there were parts of it I really did love. I DID love watching babies be born. If anyone had looked at me too closely in the operating room during the C-section I saw, they'd have seen me crying behind my mask because it was literally the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I loved cuddling and comforting the newborns, and helping first time moms learn that no, you won't break your precious new baby. But there were other things, things I won't specify here, that really turned me off to nursing, that made me really dislike the clinical despite all of those great moments. So I withdrew from my clinicals that semester and decided to go part time, and try them again in the spring, hoping things would be different then.

By the time January rolled around, I genuinely thought things were going to be so much better this time around, and that I would get through both of my clinicals with no problems, but...I'm sure you guessed by now that that wasn't the case. Hate is a very strong word, but I borderline hated my clinicals the second time around. And that's when I had to start facing the fact that...maybe I wasn't meant to be a nurse.

It took me a long time to come to that conclusion. Or more accurately, to be able to acknowledge it and accept it. In my mind, not becoming a nurse was equal to becoming a failure. For the past three and a half years, my family and friends thought I was going to walk away from all of this schooling as an RN. I had spent so much time and effort and money on this. I was only one year away from graduation. In theory, I could have graduated in December if I'd played my cards right. In May, I could have sat for my LPN boards. So I'm sure by now you're saying, "But you're so close! How could you give up now??" Believe me, I know better than anybody else how damn close I was. And I will do my best to explain just how I can walk away from it, despite all of those things.

I had put so much of my worth into becoming a nurse. I'd been telling myself for years now that I would finally be worth something once I got that nursing degree. Once I could put RN after my name. And I told myself that was the only way I'd be worth something. I also wanted my mom to be proud of me. I'd put her through hell as a teenager, and I wanted to give something back to her. I wanted her to be able to say, "My daughter is a nurse," and finally give her something to be proud of. Like despite everything that happened in the past, I got through it and redeemed myself.

All of those things put so much pressure on me to finish this degree at all costs. In the beginning, it didn't matter to me that I was absolutely miserable while taking the classes. I'd get that degree and be worth something! I'd be valuable as a human being, and that was all I wanted and all that mattered.

But then somewhere along the line, I began to realize that a degree or a profession is a twisted, unhealthy measuring stick for your self-worth. Being able to put two letters after my name wasn't going to automatically change who I was and make me this person who was now ten times more worthy of, I don't know, anything and everything. I can still be worth something even without that degree.

Despite this revelation, I briefly considered trying to finish anyway, but then I remembered that this was the year that I'm supposed to be doing things that scare me, and this definitely qualifies. I have strayed so far off of the path I mapped out after high school graduation. Six years ago, I thought I'd have a bachelor's degree with a teaching job by now, and instead...I don't have a degree OR a career. And I'm 24. That terrifies me. Some days I wonder if I'm making a huge mistake here, but...I don't think I am. I'm doing what I know in my heart is the best for me. And I've spent so much of my life doing the exact opposite of what's best for me, so I think it's important to do what's right, right now, even if it leaves me so unsure of my future and what it has in store for me. Sometimes life involves taking chances and risks and trusting your gut, and that's exactly what I'm doing. And in the end, I think I'll be just fine.