As nursing faculty, wherever your students are, I encourage you to think about how you can become a nursing mentor and inspire them towards a new goal. This goal could be nursing practice-related or nursing academic-related.
A nursing mentor's impact
When I returned to school to obtain my BSN, I considered that to be my “terminal degree”. I had no further aspirations and with a growing family, I had no time, or so I thought, for another degree. I was not “settling” for a BSN, I was being realistic in my own abilities and vision of what I could offer the profession.
That was true until I completed my capstone project under the direction of a very invested nursing faculty mentor. She encouraged me to consider graduate school, specifically to become a nurse educator. Why not I thought, if I could successfully complete a 100-page capstone, I could complete a thesis. So, I did!
Again, nearing the end of my master’s program, I found myself in the very capable hands of yet another great nursing faculty mentor who motivated me to keep going for “the” terminal degree of Ph.D. If I could successfully complete a few hundred-page theses, I could complete a several-hundred-page dissertation. So, I did!