Brookhaven Nursing Program

I will have all of my support classes done next year and will be able to apply to the following year to Brookhaven's nursing program so can be RN. The thing I am most terrified about is learning to draw blood, had really bad experiences with getting my blood drawn when I was young and now have an unatural fear of getting blood drawn or having needles in veins. I know that there are plenty of threads on here that say people had same fear and were able to work through it with exposure. I actually want to immerse myself in it so that I can get through it and hopefully become proficient at drawing blood, placing i.v.s, etc. so that I wont be the one traumatizing patients later on. What I am concerned with is that I thought the Brookhaven program allowed the students to draw blood on each other and get used to it (wasn't really looking forward to people learning on me as I have terrible veins that professionals have issues with so I can't imagine how painful a newbie would be trying to dig in my arm but would rather have the experience with fellow students instead of a patient). However I was just informed by a friend that is currently going through the program that they were not allowed to stick each other, were only allowed to practice on a manequin and her first experience trying was with an 80 year old woman with bruises every where and nonexistant veins! She said she had to practice putting ivs on her bf so she could get experience.

So my question is for either anyone who has gone through the Brookhaven nursing program, if you would recommend it or if you could relate any experiences? Or if you guys think I should try to take a phlebotomy course prior to applying to for the program so that I can get experience (still scared but gotta confront it at some point) or try to donate blood and see how they do it, or any other suggestions? Thanks so much. Sorry if this is a repeat, I tried to find direct knowledge on blood drawing at Brookhaven but didn't see anything specific