The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the self-talk of recently graduated nursing students and identify themes related to their self-motivated persistence. Twenty six participants from three cohorts who graduated from a small public university in New England completed narrative responses to an open-ended prompt. Using a grounded theory approach, hand-coding and software analysis of the narratives yielded eight themes of participants' self-talk consistent with constructs of Tinto's model of student persistence and research on student retention, motivation, self-efficacy, and self determination. The study addresses a gap in the literature, specifically nursing students' voices related to motivation and persistence. The findings confirm that nursing students use self-talk and offer new data on how self-talk motivates them to persist. Knowing what nursing students tell themselves to overcome adversities they face, and how self talk relates to concepts of motivation, self-efficacy, self-determination, and persistence, may help faculty effectively support more students toward graduation and practice. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]