Nursing School Assistance

I say GO for it. I was a senior level chemist with the Florida Department of Health in Jacksonville when I decided to go to nursing school. I was 35 years old, married with three children. My wife was supportive or it could not have happened. I am so very happy I had the courage to make this change. As much as I enjoyed being a chemist, I love being a nurse. Take the pre-nursing courses you are missing and go from there. I got my degree from Florida Community College in Jacksonville. It is an ADN, but I am currently working on my BSN. I went the ADN route because I could get the degree in 15 months. I took a bit of a pay cut, but am very happy. For me the career change was more than worth it.

You will make much less money as an LPN than an RN with many of the same responsibilities. I would suggest going the RN route. Most of those programs will take two years. I was blessed with the ability to work full-time and go to school full-time. Not everyone can do that in the nursing program. I had to work a varied schedule, but with my position, that was doable. If you desire to go RN, but have to go LPN, then you can always bridge. The only problem with that is the limited number of seats for most bridge programs. There was an LPN in my nursing classes that wnet through the regular RN program b/c it was faster than going LPN to RN, but this was in Jacksonville so there may be more programs down where you are. It is something to think about though. Whatever you decided, best of luck to you. Nursing can be both uplifting and draining, but rarely is it boring, although those days are longed for at times.

I took the NAT, at least that is what I think it was called. It had several sections: math, reading comp, a couple of science sections, spelling (yeah I said spelling - and it was my hardest). As far as study guides go, I am sure there are some, but do not know for sure. I took the test to see how I would do before I bought a study guide, and did well enough to not have to retake, but I had a science and math background, and that is a large portion of the test.

some will require either the NET or TEAS .... and if you don't have a degree, some also require an additional test called the TABE

yup - i am first career was a cop .... i'm 46 and ready to start over