The Story Behind the Schooling: A Nursing Student’s Voice

>>Listen to The Story Behind the Schooling: Nursing, Journalism, and a Student’s Voice 

On a recent episode of the Love n’ Leary Nursing Podcast, hosts Marion Leary, PhD, MPH, RN and Rebecca Love, RN, MSN, FIEL sat down with Danae Petit, a rising senior nursing student at the University of Pittsburgh and senior columnist at The Pitt News.

Danae’s path into nursing started during COVID. She thought she might want to be a doctor, but she didn’t love the idea of years of school and limited patient contact. Nursing felt like the right fit. From the moment she started at Pitt, she fell in love with the program, her clinicals, and her patients.

She also brought something with her that not every nursing student has — a love for writing, and the courage to use it.

Danae was the kind of high school student who could glance at material an hour before a test and ace it. Then she got to Pitt. Anatomy hit like a wall.

“I didn’t know how to study, I didn’t know what I was doing actually. I didn’t know how to manage my time correctly… I just thought I had to do everything by myself, and I actually could not do everything by myself.”

Her hyper-independence almost cost her. She started doubting whether nursing was even right for her. So she did what writers do. She wrote about it. Her article on the things she learned during her first year of nursing school became a column at The Pitt News — and the response surprised her. Other students reached out. They had felt the same way. They thought they were alone.

That’s when she realized her writing could do something.

Danae’s most recent article was about what it means to be a Black nurse. The piece started with a small moment — a worker at a campus food spot recognizing her scrubs and wishing her good luck. He could have said nothing. He chose to say something.

In her article, she wrote:

“I represent every black woman who stood before me and every black woman who will come after me. I represent progress and possibilities in spaces that haven’t always been welcoming to us. I represent a sense of unspoken solidarity.”

That piece stuck with Rebecca and Marion. Black students make up only about 11% of undergraduate nursing students. Danae described being able to count the Black students in her nursing program on her hands. The hosts talked about why representation in nursing matters — patients deserve to see themselves in the people caring for them, and stories like Danae’s help future students see themselves in the profession.

Finding Her Niche in Labor and Delivery

In September, Danae started her clinical rotation at UPMC Magee, the women’s hospital in Pittsburgh. On her very first day on the labor and delivery floor, she watched a C-section.

“I think that was the coolest thing I have ever seen in my life.”

She went on to see a second C-section with twins and was one of the only students in her clinical group to witness a live birth. Combined with a professor she actually looked forward to seeing every week, the experience locked it in. Labor and delivery is where she wants to be.

Her senior year transitional clinical placement isn’t confirmed yet, but she has her fingers crossed for Magee’s labor and delivery floor — or one of their mother-baby floors as a second choice.

The conversation kept circling back to one theme. Marion talked about how nurses can use different voices and platforms to promote the profession — and how it doesn’t have to be a choice between nursing and writing. Rebecca pushed harder. She told Danae her dad was right about her writing being something worth pursuing.

“Most of our profession has remained hidden across history. It has not been documented, it has not been written about… When it is no longer written about, it goes and it is forgotten.”

Both hosts encouraged Danae to keep writing. The profession needs nurses who can tell the story of what’s happening on the front lines in a way that resonates beyond the academic and the clinical. That kind of storytelling — emotional, honest, accessible — is rare. And it’s exactly what nursing needs more of.

Danae’s story is for every nursing student who has felt like they were drowning during their first year. It’s for every nurse who has ever wondered if their voice matters. And it’s for every patient who deserves to see themselves in the people caring for them.

🤔Nurses, share your thoughts in the discussion forum below!