The one thing that nursing school didn't teach me

It wasn’t my first day, but it was still near the beginning of the journey.

It was a normal day in the emergency room. The rooms were steady, all of us just kind of going through the motions. The sun was out, and it was one of those deceptively peaceful Saturdays — the kind where you wonder why people come to the ER for what seem like minor complaints.

At one point, several of us were gathered in the doctors’ dictation area, chatting. No life-or-death stuff, just the usual lull between the waves. I remember looking up at the ambulance camera — the one pointed at the back doors of the ER. After report was given, we’d watch for the trucks to roll in or for anything unusual happening outside.

On this day, we could see the sunlight and the cool breeze in the trees. We could imagine being out there, doing whatever normal people do on a normal Saturday morning.

And then a small figure appeared on the screen.

A child. Alone.

They wandered around the ambulance bay, back and forth, looking small against the stretch of concrete and sunlight. At one point, they tried to open the doors.

“Why is such a small child back there?” someone said.

We all leaned in to look.

The Moment Everything Changes

The child was pale, but standing. Alive. Alert. At least on the surface.

When the doors slid open, though, the air shifted.

The child wasn’t speaking clearly — just wide-eyed, breathing hard, a strange wheezing sound scraping the edges of every breath. They pointed to their foot and got out the words: bitten.

And just like that, the energy went from a 0.1 to a full-blown 100.

We learned a lot in those two years of nursing school. Labs. IV access. How to stay calm and think critically. But nothing in the textbook prepared me for the way a quiet Saturday could explode into chaos in the span of seconds.

The child was in full-blown anaphylaxis. No parent in sight.

One moment they were standing. Minutes later, they were sedated, intubated, meds pushed, a whole team working with one shared focus: keep them alive.

When the dust settled and the monitors finally steadied, we all just stood there — every one of us shaken.

The Lesson No Textbook Can Teach

Here’s the thing: Nursing school can prepare you for skills.

What it can’t prepare you for is the shift.

The way your body moves before your brain can catch up. The way adrenaline hums in the air like electricity. The way the ER demands you go from zero to everything, without warning, and with no script.

No instructor can give you that. You only learn it by living it.

Looking Back

That day taught me what nursing school never could:

• It’s never just a normal day.

• Preparation only gets you so far. Presence takes you the rest of the way.

• Even the pros get shaken. We all needed a breath, a laugh, maybe even that drink or smoke after it was over.

But we also walked away with a little more respect for the thin line between ordinary and life-changing.

And maybe that’s the lesson nursing school doesn’t teach you — because you have to feel it to really understand.