There's a parking lot outside every nursing school in America, and in it, right now, a student is crying — convinced she's the only one. She's wrong. Jon Haws RN names the most universal unspoken ritual in nursing education: why the car (the first private space after hours of performed composure), why almost everyone does it and nobody says so (the silence IS the culture), the difference between normal release tears and the signal tears that mean it's time to get backup, and the two-word text — "parking lot" / "same" — that has carried more students through nursing school than any study guide. Every nurse you admire has a parking lot. The difference was never the crying. Note: this episode touches on student mental health; if you're struggling, in the US you can call or text 988. From NURSING.com. Keywords: crying in nursing school, nursing school stress, nursing school mental health, is nursing school supposed to be this hard, nursing student burnout, emotional exhaustion nursing school.

Somewhere between first semester and pinning, relationships end — the supportive boyfriend, the childhood best friend, sometimes the fiancé — and every cohort knows it and nobody says it out loud. Jon Haws RN says it out loud: why nursing school strains relationships in ways nobody warns you about (it doesn't just take your time — it changes your availability as a person, and growth and leaving look identical from the outside for a while), the three-question sort that separates relationships struggling to adjust from the ones showing you who they always were, and the actual scripts: the 20-minute weekly state-of-the-union, the answer to "you've changed" that has saved relationships, the voice-memo friendship downgrade, and the one artifact to hand family who "don't get it." Grieve what falls away. Don't apologize for growing. The most personal episode we've ever done. From NURSING.com. Keywords: nursing school relationships, nursing school breakup, boyfriend doesn't understand nursing school, losing friends in nursing school, nursing school changed me, dating in nursing school.

Twenty-five years ago today, rows of gurneys stood ready outside St. Vincent's Hospital — and stayed empty. Most of you listening weren't born yet. So today: no study tips, no advice, nothing to sign up for. Just the stories that belong to this profession now — the hospitals that stood ready, the largest patient influx in American hospital history at a small downtown hospital, and the nurses we lost: Captain Kathy Mazza, the OR nurse turned Port Authority commander who shot out the North Tower's glass walls so hundreds could escape, found five months later beside the patient she refused to leave — alongside Stephen Huczko, a fellow nurse-officer. Touri Bolourchi. Jean Hoadly Peterson. Lydia Bravo. Christine Egan. And the nurses still caring for 9/11 responders and survivors, twenty-five years later. This is not a history lesson. It's a handoff.