School verses Real World

[Sage611]

Just started nursing school and it is overwhelming! I anticipated the rigors of a new program, but I go home with heart palpitations. I can't sleep. My mind has a running schedule of deadlines and preparations, not to mention very real worries of feeling adequately prepared for jobs to come. What is the easier transition? From school to world or world to school? I bought a planner, have essentially scheduled my life. (Kids/husband, leisure, sleep, chores); but I could use advice and ruminations on what's to come. What were your experiences? Do you feel you evolved into a good nurse? Do you have helpful hints? Was school harder in comparison to that first job or the other way around?

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

EVERYONE feels they evolved into a great nurse. Just ask them. That said, not everyone IS a great nurse.

With a husband and kids, you've been away from school for a time. I'm guessing that your transition from world to school is going to be a more difficult one that from school to world. Although my current orientee, who is a second or third career nurse (depending upon whether you consider her time hostessing in a geisha club in Japan, leading hikes in some of the world's most beautiful places or being "a kept woman") tells me that the transition from school to nursing was a particularly difficult one for her because she's never had a job with such life and death responsibility before.

I went from high school (where I never studied because I never needed to) to college where suddenly I needed to study, and that was very difficult. My transition from college to nursing was quite painful and difficult -- largely because I was young, foolish and introverted. Extroverts have an easier time of it. Going back for a graduate degree years later was difficult because after working full time, I had to make time for classes, study, class projects, group projects, etc. I made it through and you will too,

[OnceMorewithFeeling]

I did not find school hard, but I found it very, very time-consuming. Keep in mind, I did not have a husband and kids like you do, so it it will be different for you--it might be hard, depending on your other obligations.

I did evolve into a good nurse, but it wasn't because of school. It was because the orientation I received on my unit, and sticking it out for the year or so after orientation when I felt so much that I had no idea what I was doing.

My advice is:

1. Get a CNA job while in school. I did not do this, much to my detriment. I would have been light years ahead during my orientation if I had.

2. Listen to and absorb from every knowledgeable nurse that you can.

3. At clinicals, do not try to judge or evaluate the RNs you are with. They are doing their job to the utmost of their abilities, and they have constraints upon them that you cannot yet imagine. (Unless they are abusing patients. Then, report their a**es.)

4. Use that Planner! Schedule your life! Classes, daily study time, test prep study time, writing paper time, meeting with group project people...etc. If you can plan it, you can do it!

[NurseGirl525, ASN, RN]

Take it from a new grad, school is nothing compared to the first job difficulty wise.

Nursing school does not prepare you to be a nurse. It prepares you to take the NCLEX. Don't get the two confused. You will learn how to be a nurse on the job.

You have two years of stress with school, stress with taking NCLEX, stress with the new job. Your stress does not end when you graduate, it only gets bigger. The stress of NCLEX for me was horrible. Much more than school. I've been dealing with the job ok, but, I most certainly have my moments.