Somewhere Between Exhaustion and Joy.
The end of nursing school and the beginning of a new normal
Last week I graduated from the Accelerated Nursing Program.
Whew. Feels utterly surreal even saying it.
And though I got pinned on Friday and attended the commencement ceremony on Saturday, nothing quite feels real yet.
To take on rigorous schooling, have our third child, learn a whole new skillset, get hired in the Emergency Department, and prepare and deliver the university commencement address all in 16 months seems like pure lunacy.
It feels like a blur. It feels like exhaustion. It feels like joy. And in some ways, it feels now, like grief.
I met some of the finest people in this program. Fellow classmates and professors, many of whom became intimate friends. I found success and failure, laughter and tears, hope and fear.
I’m a better man today than I was in January of 2025, albeit one with many more grey hairs.
The thing that people have told me time and time again as I’ve made this transition from chaplaincy into nursing is that it must have been difficult to make such a radical career adjustment.
But I don’t see it that way.
From the beginning, my work as a chaplain was rooted in a desire to love and to serve and to meet people specifically within the healthcare space. And in many ways, I see nursing as a continuation of that work — same role, different badge.
I hope to steward that calling well.
Not only for my own calling, but for the countless people such as my wonderful wife, family, and close friends who have endlessly poured into me and carried me through each leg of the journey. People who prayed for me and offered discernment.
People who continue to show up no matter what, and reveal Christ’s love when I forget it.
I mentioned it briefly, but about a month ago I was asked to deliver the university commencement address. I felt humbled to oblige to such a request and for the better part of three and a half weeks, I had been mulling through each word of it, trying to reinforce the thesis that when God calls us to take a step of faith in life, it is our obligation to see it through.
I’m not much of a public speaker and take far more pride in my writing, but it was such an honor to do this that despite my fear, I went ahead and said yes anyway.
I’m happy to report that it went well.
I wanted to share the manuscript of it here with you, in the hopes that it might be an encouragement to you too, wherever God is taking you in your life.
Your life matters. It has purpose. Lean into those who will always remind you of that.
Blessings friends,
- Devon.
(PS: Now that I have more free time and mental capacity, my old writing schedule will resume.)
(PPS: Huge thank you to Deidre Braley for providing manuscript edits during the revision process.)
Graduates, colleagues, friends — congratulations! This moment matters. It represents years of hard work, perseverance, late-night study sessions, and more early morning coffee runs than perhaps we’d like to admit. Take it in. You’ve earned it.
My name is Devon Comp, and it is both a privilege and a deep honor to be speaking with you this afternoon.
If I’d dare to guess, you are likely a very different person sitting here today than you were when your collegiate journey began. And perhaps if your journey has been anything like mine, it was anything but traditional.
Within the first six months of enrolling at USF, I had changed my degree path three times and was on the verge of dropping out. I was completely unsure of what I wanted to do academically and I felt lost, overwhelmed, and disappointed that I didn’t have life perfectly mapped out the way I thought it should look.
The ideology that I held onto was that my purpose in life was tethered to what I could control and manipulate, a future dictated completely by my doing. Of course, the flaw in that mentality is that when the plan crumbled, so did my identity.
I had the wrong posture.
And I’m thankful that USF showed me another way.
It took a professor who prayed for me in the hallway to help me see that God’s purpose transcends any plan we make and that our worth isn’t earned by merit, but by being created in the image of God. I learned the importance of stewardship and service: caring for others, stepping beyond my comfort zone to grow, and offering hope in a world that can feel increasingly bleak.
Looking back now, I realize that none of the defining moments in my life began with certainty. They began with trepidation. They began with questions I didn’t yet have the answers to.
But I think that was exactly the point.
During the spring semester of my first year, some of my friends who were part of the college choir persuaded me to join, and not long after, I was chosen to serve as the choir’s chaplain, a role I had neither sought nor expected but accepted in faith, trusting that maybe something good would come from it.
As the chaplain, I found myself preaching messages, leading devotionals, and walking alongside my peers during some of the most difficult seasons of their lives—seasons of grief, mental health struggles, and loss. We grew together. We laughed together. We wept together. It was one of the greatest honors of my life to serve them in that capacity.
A few weeks after I had become the chaplain of the choir, one of my professors asked to speak with me after class. I assumed I was in trouble for something, but instead he asked if I had ever considered becoming a hospital chaplain before. I hadn’t. All I knew was that hospitals were for the sick, and the thought of stepping into one absolutely terrified me. But that day he and I walked to the hospital in the pouring rain to meet the Director of Spiritual Care. By the end of that lunch, I knew I had found the field where I wanted to serve.
In the years since then, I have worked in both hospital and outpatient hospice settings. I have officiated dozens of funeral services. I have met hundreds of people and listened to thousands of stories. I have sat with the sick and held the hands of the dying. I worked through a global pandemic where med-surg rooms became makeshift COVID ICUs and families were separated from loved ones. I have stood in spaces where life has felt fragile and uncertain.
When you are young—graduating from college and chasing your dreams—the possibility of time running out feels so improbable, so distant. But that work made me realize, just like a flicker of flame, how brief life really is, how priceless the people around us truly are, and how behind every experience is a lesson that might change your life.
I learned from the dying what it means to live.
None of this was part of my original plan.
But I didn’t get here alone.
The truth is, none of us are self-made. We are “we-made”—shaped by the people who have guided, challenged, and believed in us along the way. Mysteriously, our lives are shaped by one another. It is our obligation then, to steward that gift well.
The more I felt fulfillment from this work, the more I felt another nudge: to apply for the accelerated nursing program. As my wife and I prayed about it, the clearer the call became. But I doubted myself again. I loved my work as a chaplain, and at the time, my wife and I were expecting our third child, who would be born just two months into the program. The thought of balancing accelerated schooling, family, and sleepless nights felt overwhelming.
I remember calling the registrar and nursing faculty more than once, secretly hoping someone would tell me not to do it, to give me the easy way out. But they didn’t. They met my hesitation with grace and encouragement.
That was 16 months ago now. What once felt impossible slowly gave way to possibility because of the people who faithfully walked beside me. People like my wife, my close friends, and many faculty here at USF.
Perhaps some of you may know exactly what comes next. But if I were to guess, most of you don’t. Maybe some of you will end up stepping into careers, graduate school, or opportunities you never expected.
Maybe you feel like I once did, overwhelmed and questioning if you’re actually ready for what comes next.
But if there’s anything my journey has taught me, it’s that you don’t need certainty to take the next step. You don’t need to feel ready. What God has called you to, He will equip you for. All you need is the faith to say yes to the opportunities that God places before you, and to trust that His plan over your life precedes any uncertainty that you feel.
Even when you feel afraid, even when you cannot see the other side, take the step anyway.
Keep trusting anyway.
Keep showing up anyway.
For it is not until we step into the furnace of trial and uncertainty that we discover what we are truly made of. Had fear prevailed, I would have missed the blessings and friendships waiting on the other side of attending USF, ministering to the choir, becoming a chaplain, and graduating from nursing school.
The same is true of you—the life you are meant to live is not waiting at the end of rigorous planning and accomplishment, it is waiting on the other side of courage.
After the first month of the nursing program here, the faculty holds an annual ceremony where they reinforce the Christian mission of service and integrity within the nursing profession, and then they present each student with a stethoscope.
I’d like to conclude by sharing the verse I chose to have engraved in the bell of my stethoscope: a verse that embodies my collegiate journey here at USF, and a verse that I pray over you, as you go from here.
It comes from Isaiah 6:8:
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
Graduates, the world you are stepping into needs hope.
It needs people like you.
It needs men and women who will step out in boldness and faith to do the right thing and show up for others.
No matter where God takes you from here, or whatever opportunities await, it is my honest prayer that your answer always will be: Here am I. Send me.
Congratulations, class of 2026! Go forth in courage.
Big congratulations!
Congratulations, Devon! That's great.