Exams.
Patient care responsibilities.
Professional standards.
And eventually, after completing an approved program, graduates must still satisfy licensing requirements before practicing as registered nurses.
Alana's public ambition is even more specific.
She has said she wants to work in pediatric intensive care.
Why PICU Nursing Is a Serious Goal
Pediatric intensive care units treat seriously ill and critically injured children.
Nurses in those environments work alongside physicians and other clinical professionals caring for young patients whose medical conditions can change rapidly.
It is emotionally demanding work.
Technically demanding work.
And work that requires far more than a famous name.
If Alana reaches that goal, families meeting her in a hospital may encounter someone in a completely different context from the television personality millions once watched.
Not a pageant contestant.
Not a meme.
Not Honey Boo Boo.
A nurse.
That is one reason her career decision has attracted so much attention.
It isn't simply that Alana went to college.
It is that she appears to be deliberately building a professional identity in an environment where childhood fame provides almost no shortcut.
Working While Studying
By 2026, her nursing path had moved beyond the classroom.
In April, June Shannon told PEOPLE that Alana was already working at a hospital in Denver while continuing her college studies.
June also said Alana remained focused on becoming a pediatric intensive care unit nurse after graduation.
PEOPLE reported that Alana was expected to graduate in 2027.
Because that update came from June rather than directly from Alana or the hospital, it is most precise to attribute it to her mother.
Still, it fits the broader trajectory Alana has discussed publicly for years.
She wanted college.
She wanted nursing.
And she appears to be continuing toward that goal.
“The Only One in My Family With a Degree”
For Alana, graduation carries another meaning.
In PEOPLE's 2025 cover story, she said:
“When I graduate I’ll be the only one in my family with a degree.”
The sentence wasn't framed as an insult toward her family.
It sounded more like recognition of what the accomplishment would represent.
Alana grew up surrounded by instability that she did not create.
She became famous before she could fully consent to what fame would mean.
She watched family problems unfold publicly.
She dealt with disputes over her childhood earnings.
She experienced her mother's addiction.
And she lost her older sister Anna “Chickadee” Cardwell, who died in December 2023 after battling adrenal cancer.
Against that background, completing a university degree becomes something bigger than a diploma.
It becomes evidence that the next generation does not have to repeat everything that came before it.
The Loss of Her Sister
Anna Cardwell's death was another profound event in Alana's young adulthood.
Anna, Alana's oldest sister, died in December 2023 from adrenal carcinoma after publicly battling cancer.
She was 29.
PEOPLE has documented Anna's illness and death as well as its continuing impact on the Shannon family.
For Alana, the loss arrived during a period when she was already adjusting to college and trying to build an independent life.
Her childhood had been documented for entertainment.
Now adult grief was unfolding in front of many of the same viewers.
That tension—between private pain and public visibility—has followed the family for most of Alana's life.
Telling Her Own Story
In 2025, Alana revisited that history through a Lifetime biographical movie titled I Was Honey Boo Boo.
The title itself makes an important distinction.
Not I Am Honey Boo Boo.
I Was Honey Boo Boo.
Alana narrated the film herself.
According to Lifetime and the production company Cineflix, the project was designed to tell the story from her perspective, including what happened behind the scenes during her childhood fame, the criticism surrounding her and the difficulties within her family.
Sources: Lifetime and Cineflix. Both confirm that Alana narrates the film and that it explores her child-stardom experience from her own perspective.
The Lifetime synopsis says the movie explores how the confident personality seen on television sometimes concealed a much more difficult reality involving family instability and public criticism.
That matters because for years, other people had helped define Alana's story.
Producers edited her.
Audiences judged her.
Tabloids described her.
Memes reduced her to jokes.
The 2025 film allowed the adult Alana to narrate the childhood version of herself.
She Didn't Want the Movie to Simply Attack Her Mother
Despite everything that happened, Alana said she did not want I Was Honey Boo Boo to become a two-hour attack on June.
She told PEOPLE that she wanted the movie to tell the truth without simply portraying her mother as a villain.
That position reflects the complexity of their relationship.
Alana can acknowledge the harm that addiction and family instability caused while also recognizing June as her mother.
She can forgive without pretending nothing happened.
She can love someone without trusting them in exactly the same way she once did.
Those are complicated adult emotions.
And they are far removed from the simplistic version of family life reality television originally presented.
She Is Trying to Outgrow a Nickname
One of the strangest things about childhood fame is that the public image often stays frozen.
People remember Macaulay Culkin as the boy in Home Alone.
They remember Shirley Temple with curls.
They remember Alana Thompson shouting catchphrases in pageant clothes.
But children grow up even when audiences don't update their mental image.
Alana is now 21.
She reached that birthday on August 28, 2026.
She is not a six-year-old pageant contestant anymore.
And the tension between those two identities—Alana and Honey Boo Boo—has become one of the defining themes of her adult life.
Her 21st Birthday Was Another Marker
Earlier in 2026, June told PEOPLE that there wasn't yet a major college graduation celebration planned because graduation was still expected the following year.
She did, however, talk about plans to celebrate Alana's 21st birthday in Las Vegas.
That birthday occurred on August 28, 2026.
So the timeline is important:
Alana is already 21.
She is expected to graduate in 2027.
Source: PEOPLE, April 2026 and August 28, 2026.
Those dates may sound like minor corrections, but accuracy matters when telling someone's life story.
Especially when so much of that person's life has already been turned into entertainment by others.
The Boyfriend Who Moved With Her
Dralin Carswell has remained part of Alana's adult life.
PEOPLE reports that the pair have been publicly linked since 2021 and moved to Colorado together when Alana began attending Regis University.
Their relationship has received criticism over their age difference and has also faced public attention because of legal issues involving Carswell.
Alana nevertheless continued the relationship and made the move to Denver with him in 2023.
That relationship remains part of her story, but increasingly it is not the main story.
College is.
Nursing is.
Graduation is.
The Meaning of Becoming a Nurse
There is an interesting contrast between reality television and nursing.