Actually, I'm having about one per day.
It's all the same basic concerns:
Will I'll be able to juggle it all? Will I ever have any free time, any life at all outside of school? Should I enjoy this summer and veg while I have the chance, or should I get a jump on the reading for fundamentals so I don't fall behind?
Should I wait for my better half to get home before I start school, or will it actually be easier for me to do it now while he's away since that's one less person for me to take care of?
What if Carpetshark gets sick and needs me to stay home with him, and thereby I have to miss class or clinical? What if he gets really sick? What if I can't find someone to watch him on clinical nights? And will I have enough time to get from where he's in childcare to where the clinicals will be held--will 20-25 minutes be cutting it too close and I should consider care for him elsewhere even if that means he switches facilities every 8 weeks?
What about all the money I'm spending on nursing school? Will that ever let up? Plus all the childcare costs per month...that won't let up, but can we really swing it?
And what if, having put so much into it, financially and otherwise, I find myself failing out or having to withdraw and wait until later to do it?
And despite all of this, I'm terrified that if I don't do it now I will never get it done and never be a nurse!
*sigh*
I just try to breathe through them, and think to myself that thousands of other people before me have been in similar if not worse situations than I, and they have made through nursing school and started their careers. That if there's a will, there's a way...and that if I really want to do this that I will find a way to do it.
I mean, so I'm in my mid-30s...there's 40, 50 and even a few 60 year olds going to nursing school.
I only have one child; my friend is doing it with three...and I just read a post on the nurses forum of one who has 7 and is going to school! Never minding the one at our orientation with was 8 months pregnant with twins (she's starting in October)--imagine going back to school with not one but TWO newborns! I remember what it was like when my son was a newborn...i.e., the time in my life when I forsook sleep.
There's nursing students that will have to work part- or even full-time while in school--I'm lucky in that I don't have to work at all...not no-money-worries lucky, but we can manage.
And let's face it--if I wait for the "perfect" time to go to nursing school, it'll never happen. Something will always come up. The husband will get home, but be on the late shift and not be able to help me much anyway. The son will start grade school, and I'll find myself accidentally pregnant. I'll wait and find out that our financial situation will be worse a few years from now, that I should have gone now when we were able to afford it. I'll wait and reapply to school to find that they won't accept my pre-reqs and I'll have to retake them...I can go on and on. The only "perfect" time is in the past, because I can look back on my life with the clarity of hindsight and say to myself, "oh yeah, that would have been the perfect time for me to have gone to nursing school, why didn't I?"
Anyway...I feel better having let all that out. I don't think it'll prevent me from having daily panic attacks though--I should be so lucky :)
