What Nursing School Does to You

Nursing school impels you to do a grab bag of things.  Now I haven't quite danced an entire years worth of schooling yet, but from what I've experienced thus far, it drives you to:

1-Combine.  You find yourself combining studying while eating, driving, cooking, cycling, walking, showering and/or _________ (fill in the blank with just about anything).
2-Prioritize.  Studying over eating.  Eating over sleeping.  Sleeping over spending time with friends and family. And at the end of two years you may find yourself hungry, tired, and alone, but definitely the most intelligent nurse in the hospital.
3-Change lifestyle patterns.  That is unless of course you already spend 25 hours a week studying pharmacology, consider an 8 minute walk a day's workout and find Florence Nightingale making nightly appearances in your dreams.  Yikes.
4-Ingest knowledge.  While it may be somewhat likened to opening a fire hose in front of your face, the amount of information presented to you and subsequently digested is nothing short of awesome.
5-Love.  Love for the job, love for the challenges, and especially love for the people who are sharing in the rollercoaster known as nursing school.  Which I suppose makes the take-away message: do what you love and love what you do.