Starting Nursing school

[johsonmichelle]

I will be starting nursing school( CCBC ESSEX) in spring and I feel unorganized. I went to orientation 2 weeks ago and I kinda got the feeling that my school was not that organized. I also got the feeling that there is a lot of unnecessary fees added on to schools fee, apart from the books, and the class fees, the outsides fees almost equate $1000 which is a lot for a community college. During the orientation we received a packet which included the list of books we needed for the semester, its says that the list is all the books we need for the first semester and the rest of program. I emailed one of the nursing administrators about which books we will need for the first semester and she said we need to buy all the book listed on the page:uhoh3:. I'm paying out of the pocket, i don't have a $1000 for books right now. So anyone who has gone to ccbc essex nursing school, can you get me some feedback ?

I'm also feeling very lost right now,like there is no structure, which ******* me off because right now.I'm not just not feeling excited about starting nursing in the spring. Did any of you guys have this feeling before you started nursing school?

[johsonmichelle]

I would have asked my parents if they could,a lot of people don't have family or friends to help them like that

[johsonmichelle]

Which BSN program are you in? I was going to apply to university of Maryland, but decided not too.

[sjalv]

I just finished my first semester of a 2 year program, and let me tell you about disorganized. Our school basically played musical chairs with the nursing department as to which teachers would be teaching which semesters. A 2nd semester teacher went back to teaching 1st semester, a teacher from the bridge (LPN-RN) program came to 1st semester, a teacher who was going to be teaching 1st semester quit last minute, and we had an interim DoN because the previous DoN unexpectedly announced her retirement. So before the semester even started, things were in disarray. Our teachers kept telling us, "Nursing is about being flexible, because things hardly ever go the way you plan in the hospital." (legit advice, at least) We didn't even know who would be our clinical instructors until the first day of class. It sounds strange they JUST NOW gave you the book list. I got my acceptance letter in April and didn't start school until August. The letter included the booklist.

[KelRN215, BSN, RN]

The only way I ever got the list of my books before the semester was by emailing the professor. When I was in college, you found out what books you needed for your classes by going to the bookstore once you'd arrived for the semester, finding the "nursing" section (or history, English, whatever) and seeing what books corresponded to the course number of the courses you were taking.

That said, I don't think I spent $1,000 in books during 4 years of college. After first semester (which, undoubtedly, was the bulk of my book fees since I didn't know any better than to buy from the school), I started buying all my books on half.com. I suggest you do the same. You can easily find some of the smaller books you need for less than a dollar. Seriously I just looked and found the med-surg text book I used on there for 75 cents. Shipping is usually quite cheap since it's media mail.

[cathering, ADN, BSN, MSN, APRN, NP]

I'm in a community college nursing program and I did spend about $1000 first semester including books, materials, insurance, and ATI materials. The books alone were about $600-700 and it was about 6 books in all. And same with you, they told me I'll use it for rest of the program. I thought no way I'll use all in the first semester! But actually I did use all except one. Especially doing my care plans. So I would get what's recommended. But buy used! No point in getting new ones.

[johsonmichelle]

Yea, i received my acceptance letter in early November, didn't have orientation till December 17th.

Before the orientation they refused to give out any information regarding the nursing program so I had to wait till orientation to get any information. Being purposely disorganized is not excuse, there is enough stress in nursing school, there is no need for unnecessary stress .

[Amnesty]

The thing to remember is that they're usually just as stressed as you are by the disorganization. Being a professor and teaching nursing classes takes a lot of flexibility and most schools pay the teachers half of what they could be making as actual nurses, so most programs stay shorthanded on professors and clinical instructors.

As far as costs, yeah, that's typical. I think I spent like $2,000 more than what tuition was just on books, insurance we had to carry, background checks, uniforms, shoes, supplies, vouchers for syllabus packets, etc. I had a friend's mom lend me some money so I could buy textbooks from Amazon and other websites instead of doing the bookstore route.

[Just.Blessed.RN, BSN, RN]

I am beginning my first semester as well and I have spent over $1500 on books, scrubs, supplies, and test/vaccinations!!!! : ( Hopefully things get cheaper and I don't gain weight so I won't need new scrubs!!!