Classes that helped pave the way

[Ambowman]

What classes helped get you where you are? Which ones helped you in making your career and which didn't?

[joanna73, BSN, RN]

Hello. I had to take the mandatory classes that all students in my program took in order to complete my degree.

I'm interested in psychology and sociology, so I chose these courses to fulfill my elective requirements.

Reviewing medications, pathology and basic nursing skills has helped me throughout my career to solidify my knowledge.

Continuous learning is a requirement for my role as a nurse educator. Now I'm enrolled in a Masters program.

The course I found a complete waste of time (for me) was child development. I knew that I wanted to work with seniors. I have no interest in pediatric health, so after the first week, I stopped going to that class.

[dawniepoo]

Health Assessment- by far the class I learned the most from. They even taught us percussion, even though it is no typically used in a nursing assessment.

[roser13, ASN, RN]

What classes helped get you where you are? Which ones helped you in making your career and which didn't?

Take classes that are required by your program. Avoid classes that are not required. It's pretty basic.

[OscarTheOwl]

Classes that didn't help get me where I am

1. Cultural anthropology

2. ASL

3. Art history

The were enjoyable and counted towards my gen eds credits, would take them again.

Classes that helped nursing wise

1. All my nursing pre-reqs

2. Nursing school

Were not enjoyable, would not want to take them ever again if my life depended on it

[Sour Lemon]

Ethics was an annoying waste of time and my sociology instructor liked to make up "facts". I thought about sending her a long email pointing out all of her inaccuracies after I got my final grade, but I was too lazy in the end.

[llg, PhD, RN]

Symbolic logic (in freshman year) was fun and I have used it almost every day. Learning how to draw valid conclusions from information is very useful.

Statistics and research is always useful as you need to understand the professional literature throughout your career.

Clinically -- I did an independent study on newborn assessment in my senior year and that helped a whole lot. But note, that was an independent study. My school did not teach that as a class.

Most of my clinical courses did not help much as I went into NICU and had to learn most clinical stuff from scratch as a new grad. A little experience working with adults was good to learn the basic ways of nursing -- but it was a lot of wasted time for me as I have never worked with adult patients as a nurse.