The Struggles of Being Friends with a Nursing Student

… and the great things, too!

By Ashley Prince, Nursing Student and ThriveAP Contributor

If you’re friends with someone in nursing school, you’ve undoubtedly noticed that we live a weird life. A life filled with 5 am alarms, back breaking stacks of books, endless nights at the library, and too-weird-to-be-true stories about patients. Sometimes we can be a hard lot to hang out with.

There aren’t many other demographics who drink wine as often as us, and don’t consider it alcoholism. I know it’s really hard for my friends to not give away spoilers to The Bachelor, or Grey’s Anatomy, even though everyone knows I won’t be watching TV again for months (and then I’m talking binge). We throw “I picked a right answer, but it wasn’t the most right” tantrums at least once a week, and then follow these up with another glass of wine. We use anyone and everyone as a dummy for skills, and no matter how much we act like Meredith Grey, we know it’s awkward. We can’t go out as often as everyone else, and then when we can, we demand that EVERYONE come to the bar because WHO KNOWS when this opportunity will arise again!

But it’s not all bad. A nursing friendship is unlike any other. Bring us coffee in the library at 2 am and we won’t ever forget it. We know how to get any kind of stain out of anything, thanks to clinicals. It’s OK if a fart slips, since literally no bodily function embarrasses us anymore (But please, no poop stories. There’ve already been enough of those!). We know how to stay up late, how to run on little sleep, and, most importantly, the best wine to buy from anywhere. But to me, the biggest pro might be that I’m trained to be sympathetic to people’s problems, no matter what they are, and have carried that into friendships. So, go ahead and tell us all the drama in your life- I might not be able to prescribe anything to make it better, but I’m here to listen, and sometimes that’s just as good.

See? It’s not all a struggle, we’re good people too! What do you think is the best, or worst, part of being friends with a nursing student? Let me know in the comments! 

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