Went through hell to get my RN… now I’m rethinking everything 😞 Advice

Went through hell to get my RN… now I’m rethinking everything 😞 Advice?

I just finished nursing school and passed NCLEX, and honestly I feel lost.

When I started nursing school (2022–2023), my plan was always to become an aesthetic nurse after graduation (with proper training, of course). But during school I got pulled into the typical nursing school mindset — constantly thinking about hospital specialties I didn’t even want. At one point I even got interested in ICU with the idea of CRNA school later on, but that’s years away and not even my original dream.

Now that I finally have my RN, I want to go back to my original plan… I just don’t know where to start.

I also make wigs completely from scratch on a sewing machine, and my long-term goal was to combine beauty + nursing somehow. I don’t want to get stuck in med-surg or somewhere I’m miserable, burn out, and wake up years later doing something I never actually wanted.

In school, whenever I said I wanted to be an aesthetic nurse, people looked at me like I was crazy. But honestly, when I said I was going to become a nurse in the first place, I got the same reaction — and I still did it.

I just don’t want to become a “regular nurse” if that makes sense. I’m open to working while I figure things out, but I want to move toward aesthetics, not away from it.

I’ll be honest about another concern too — it feels like med spas mostly hire a certain look, and I rarely see people who look like me in those roles. That’s been discouraging.

If anyone started in aesthetics as a new RN (or transitioned into it), how did you do it? What jobs should I look for first? What would you do if you were starting over?

I worked really hard to get here and just don’t want to waste it.

Any advice is appreciated ❤️