The Full College Experience: ECU Honors and Nursing

By: Meghan Boop, EC Scholar and Honors College Senior

As a 20-something-year-old in this day and age, a number one conversation starter is inevitably “What is your major?” Some people are still in the process of figuring this question out, others have switched multiple times in the course of their four years of undergraduate, and some of us are able to answer this question confidently from the beginning.

I knew I wanted to be a nursing major since my senior year of high school, so I applied to ECU with hopes of getting to fulfill my career path at this top nursing program. Being a part of the ECU nursing school is one of the toughest, yet most rewarding adventures on which I have embarked. The schedule is nothing like that of any other undergraduate major. You spend the normal 16 or so hours in class a week, on top of anywhere from 6 to 16 clinical hours per week. You get to rotate through all types of interesting clinical sites, from psychiatric wards to pediatric emergency departments. You get to learn in-depth skills such as intravenous administration and nasogastric tube insertion. Being a nursing major is certainly not easy, but it is the best choice I have ever made.

However, I don’t like to be defined by just my major, and that is one of the many reasons why I absolutely love EC Scholars and the Honors College. EC Scholars and the Honors College have offered so many diverse opportunities for its undergraduate students. Apart from the typical prerequisites for nursing school, I got to take part in leadership colloquiums, Holocaust seminars, research opportunities, and cultural courses offered by the Honors College. When people ask what I do at East Carolina, I am able to mention many unique experiences that other nursing majors have never gotten to be a part of. I also get to transcend the College of Nursing bubble. At the College of Nursing, students hangout with the same people 5 days a week on an isolated campus, so the EC Scholar program allows me to still keep in touch with the main campus of ECU and my friends in the program that have different majors.

In the end, I think everyone in college feels like they are defined by their decisions; their decision on their university, their decision on their major, their decision to join a student organization, etc. All I can say is I couldn’t be happier with my decisions to be a part of the EC Scholar family and the College of Nursing.