Maybe I should call this "things that I wish other people told me". Anyway, I will be done with school in Dec. I am doing an evening ASN program since I work full-time plus.
I have found that the pre-reqs that are required (Chem, A&P I &II, Micro, etc) for this program (I am not sure of the exact req for all programs, but most seem similar) are the BARE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS. If you do well enough, they will get you into the program, but by no means do they indicate if you will do well. We started with 80 students, went down to 45, by the second semester. Many people who failed who had all A & B's in the pre-reqs.
Nursing is very heavily centered around Chemistry. If you struggled through or hated chemistry, you will NOT like Nursing. Perioid. I wish I had taken MORE CHEMISTRY.
MATH - take more. You need to be very, very comfortable with math. Each semester we have a make or break medical calculations exam. So if you hate math, see above comments.
If I had to do it all over again, I'd take my time doing the pre-reqs. I rushed through them to apply, and was not finished in time to apply the first year and had to sit out an entire year before being accepted. On the bright side, I did take an extra statistics class and an intermediate algebra class for the reasons sited above. I really should have taken more chemistry, that would have been a nice boost.
Overall, as you may have heard, Nursing is probably one of the hardest programs no matter what state, what college, what program you do. I call it Nursing Bootcamp. The current role of nursing has moved away from bedside nursing to more delegation, and documentation. If you are going into nursing thinking it involves a lot direct patient care, you may not like the job options. Hospitals aren't interested in nurses who can't keep up with their documentation (or wait until the end of shift and then go into OT) throughout their shift.
