Perfection is Overrated by Carolyn

Perfection is Overrated by Carolyn - January 2022 Scholarship Essay

I knew I had an issue when I started dreaming about the human bone structure and woke up in a cold sweat from a nightmare that I had incorrectly performed a health assessment on a patient during my clinical. When I started nursing school in 2020, I was fully dedicated to my studies and failed to make time for friends, family, and most importantly myself. It took a year of beating myself up over grades that were not “perfect” to realize I needed to make a change to salvage what was left of my mental health. The skill I learned in 2021 that was most important to my academic success was managing my time in a way that let me focus primarily on my academics but also let me have time to spend participating in clubs, work, and with my loved ones.

I learned that managing my time better and becoming a well-rounded person not only made me study in a more efficient manner but made me overall a happier human being. In college, it can be hard to find your identity outside of being a student. I knew that pulling my hair out while trying to memorize the steps of the glycolysis cycle was not going to help me in the long run. The first step I took to balancing my life was by creating a planner that scheduled out time for studies, working out, clubs, and social time. The next step I took was using other nursing students as accountability partners. Together we would block out a couple of hours to study together at the library and then reward ourselves afterward by going out to dinner with each other.

Those little steps resulted in a massive improvement in my life. I attribute finding balance and harmony in my life to my academic success. In my spring and fall semester of 2021, I not only achieved a 4.0 but I also had happier and healthier memories than I did during 2020.