ABSTRACT
Prospective nursing students inevitably develop expectations about what they’ll experience at “nursing school.” Enrolled students tell me about having imagined a world in which they acquire sophisticated technical skills, save lives, and console the inconsolable. Over time, those expectations-not entirely unrealistic-are tempered by experience. Because the students at my urban public university are typically older than traditional college students, they seldom entertain “ER” type fantasies about nursing practice. They predict particular educational experiences fairly accurately, reporting that they expect to hear lectures about therapeutic interventions, to practice those interventions in laboratories as well as in actual clinical settings, and to be examined on their theoretical knowledge and technical proficiency. In short, they have a realistic, but incomplete image of nursing education.
