Nursing students didn’t just leave the College of Medicine for Christmas break; we vanished! For many of us, it was more than Christmas lights or jollof rice. It was a needed break! We were literally running from the exhaustion that piled up after weeks of deadlines, assignments, postings, and the never-ending CMUL drama. Not many hung around or looked back; after all, words like “family time” and “Detty December” are rare commodities for full-time nursing students, so we grabbed them like they were the last meal on earth.

But blink, and you missed it. The break ended as quickly as it began. One minute you’re home, the next you’re back in the trenches. We returned just as fast, back to our schedules, classes, postings, and deadlines. It almost felt unreal, as though the holiday had been imagined rather than lived. People say, “Happy New Year.” Maybe it is, or we just say it because the calendar tells us to.

For most of us, reality didn’t hit until we walked through the school gate. Suddenly, it’s back: the quiet, tired chorus of, “Here we go again.” Part of me wanted the new year to do more than just show up. Maybe steal a few deadlines, erase some uncompleted tasks, or hand us that magical clean slate everyone keeps hyping. But just like our clothes waited for us at school, untouched and unchanged, so did everything else.

The Failed Reset

We often come back with more than we left with. Shout out to everyone who raids their parents’ kitchen and returns with every available foodstuff. But aside from that, there are the deadlines we carried over. The books we swore we’d read at home but never opened. Presentations and assignments that waited for us, probably grinning the whole time we were gone.

The cycle starts again, no warning. One day, you’re waking up late with breakfast in bed. Next, you’re sprinting to escape being locked out of Dr Nweke’s 8 a.m. class on barely five hours of sleep, sometimes less. The shock is real; your body feels it before your mind does. There’s also that quiet pressure to shake off the softness of the holidays immediately. Stress takes over, discipline returns, and focus snaps back, like resting was a mistake you now have to fix.

January itself has a reputation. People treat it like a pause button, a magic line between the old mess and a brand new start. We discuss it as if time is giving us a breather, a reset, a chance to finally exhale. This idea is everywhere: in those ‘this year will be different’ conversations, in the quiet promises we make to ourselves, and in planners and resolutions that pretend progress starts on page one. Even when we know better, we still play along. We still hope.

It’s not silly to want that. There’s comfort in believing a new month or year can lift some of the weight, make things less overwhelming, explain why we’re tired, or give us permission to try again. But the truth is honestly a bit rude. For nursing students, the workload doesn’t magically shrink just because the year changed. The emotional weight sticks around. The pressure was here long before January showed up. The calendar moves, but the demands don’t budge. The hope January brings often feels fake, not because hope is useless, but because we expect it to do the impossible. Time doesn’t erase unfinished tasks, change deadlines, or make our routines any less chaotic.

Living without the reset

Of course, you are not expecting me to tell you how to predict a Dr Olowe impromptu Monday test or how to perfectly prepare for several presentations that somehow all happen in the same week. That kind of certainty just doesn’t exist here. But it wouldn’t be honest to say there’s no way to survive this system and still keep your year-end goals.

It’s not about magic solutions or secret hacks. It’s just about finding your own way through the chaos.

Be dangerously prepared!

Sometimes it actually makes sense to prepare earlier than usual, because experience has shown that waiting is a trap. Sometimes you have to plan for things to accumulate, rather than pretending they won’t. Sometimes it’s about learning, slowly and messily, how to stay ambitious without letting it drown you. It’s not elegant or balanced, but at least it’s real. But in all you do, rest and reset! After all, proper preparation… You know the rest, lol.

Just a Continuation…

There’s really no dramatic way out of this cycle and no easy escape from the workload. Nursing school just keeps moving, mostly ignoring all our optimism for new beginnings. Maybe the problem isn’t that January lets us down, but that we keep expecting it to carry what’s really ours: the pressure, the pace, the expectations, and the unfinished work.

The new year is only new on the calendar. In our classes, schedules, and the quiet weight we drag back through the school gate, it’s just more of the same. And maybe there’s something steadier in admitting that. It’s not relief or motivation. Just honesty.

We did not reset.
We returned.

Maybe late? But HAPPY NEW YEAR, NUNSAITES.

Author: Adebayo Oluwabojutomi