Nursing school or become a teacher?

Slou, that is a pretty sad commentary, I agree!

Also, as someone who "gave teaching some time" and waited for it to work out, I have just one piece of advice for your friend. She shouldn't waste any more time waiting. If she hates it now, she will not like it a whole lot better in two or three years after the paperwork continues to pile up on her.

I actually like teaching. Even as a beginning teacher who was snowed under and stressed out, I still liked teaching right from the very beginning. If I were married or had a partner who helped with the house expenses, I might try to find a way to deal with the crazy hours and the paperwork and just stick with it. But I am a single woman. For me the decision to give nursing a try is partly a lifestyle decision and partly a financial decision.

If your friend doesn't like teaching now, I seriously doubt that she will like it later. Just my .02....and thanks for your response!

Hehe....LOL

Thank you, tencat. It is so nice to hear from a former teacher turned nurse who doesn't regret it.

I agree that there are some parallels between nursing and teaching, in the sense that it is a helping profession. I just can't get over the difference in pay.

I am sick and tired of being broke all the time. It's not because I'm out spending extravagantly. I buy shoes at Payless, many of my clothes at Target, all of my make-up is Maybelline, and I do my own hair. It is really getting old....I just don't see our teaching salaries going up anytime soon.


Hi, KatRN... Yes I am a relatively new teacher. Perhaps your teacher friends work in a school or district that doesn't require as much documentation from its teachers... One of the reasons I am spending time on lessons this year is because the new assistant principal at my school is requiring more detail in all of our lessons than we have traditionally done. We also have adopted brand new science and social studies series which require completely different lessons this year.

In addition our new superintendant has increased what we need to document for report cards. This past semester some of my students' report cards were eight and nine pages long, filled with boxes I had to manually check off to indicate on a scale of 1 to 5 where the child is at with very specific reading comprehension skills.

I could go on and on...

As far as the salary... I still feel that based on what I've researched and what I've heard from other nurses here, that the pay is significantly higher in nursing. For nurses who have BSN's and masters degrees, I mean.

If I got a master's in education tomorrow, my salary would go up to $38,000 and I would still be working 60 hours a week. A nurse with a master's degree would easily make $10,000 to $20,000 more than that depending on the setting.

I have no doubt that many nurses (and probably eventually me) feel that they are not properly compensated for the amount of work and stress they deal with. But the bottom line is that they still make more than teachers.

I know I probably will work harder in nursing. And I won't have two months off every summer. And I won't have as many bathroom breaks and all of that. But I need to make more money. If I get the LPN certificate, then I will have the ability to choose what shift I work on. At that point I can go to grad school if I want. I would like to get a master's in nursing or physical therapy, I'm not decided yet. I've heard good things about physical therapy, that there are many opportunities yet it is supposedly not as stressful as nursing, and the patients have a higher rate of success due to the nature of physical therapy.

I really like your idea of shadowing a nurse on a 12-hour shift. Thanks for that suggestion.

Thanks Kat and Tachy.

I agree that would be the best route. But in my area the only accredited bridge programs are offered in the daytime, which would conflict with my teaching job.

The online private universities are way out of my price range, I've found.

I'm going to start the LPN program in August (18 months, part time evenings). Who knows, maybe sometime between now and then one of the local universities will begin to offer an evening bridge program...