658 Days until nursing school :-(

toucheturtle · Mar 13, 2012

Can you take the classes at a different school? Maybe a community college? The one I'm attending offered most of the key pre-reqs every quarter.

Good luck and hang in there!

2bEsqtoRN · Mar 13, 2012

Welcome aboard the Patience boat. I'm also applying next year for admission into Fall 2014. Just keep focused on your goals and do as well as you can in your classes. Nursing school will always be there.

Boxer Mama · Mar 13, 2012

I agree with seeing if you could take the classes at a different college over the summer and then transfer the credits. Good luck!!!

hudabelle · Mar 13, 2012

Check to see what classes are needed for the Bachelor's Degree and take those (if you can get into them). Many aren't needed for the Associates Degree in nursing but you will have to take when you want your BSN. Some classes that you can probably take with the prerequisites you already have include statistics or nutrition (yes some nursing school's have these as prereq's anyway). Both of those classes you can take online. Also a study review class is a great resource for helping with studying and test taking and they also help you with filling out resumes.

I know when I had a quarter off I always got out of study habits and it took a week or two to get back in the swing of it when I finally went back.

Kendel.G · Mar 13, 2012

Yeah I've checked some schools, but all the summer classes star in June. My grandparents have decided to take me to Europe (all expenses paid) for the middle 2 weeks of June. So I am trying to find somewhere where I could take chem & a&p 1 from july-august. Is it even possible to do those two classes together over the summer??? I'm a really good student and think I could do it. But my parents honk ibshould wait till fall.

So I'm ok with waiting just have no idea how ill make the time go. I'm going to take my CNA course this fall and hopefully work at a local hospital. Si that'll help with the whole waiting thing.

I just don't want to wait 2 years for nursing school! But I know that pre-reqs are important and everyone has to do them. I just dont like them!

NeoNatMom · Mar 13, 2012

Well, I am sure that you could take other classes that you need aside from prereqs. Its actually good to try to spread out you hard and easy classes such as history,psych, etc with your sciences. Try to get some of those out of the way so that once youre in your program, you have that alone to worry about. Good luck! :yelclap:

MN-Nurse, ASN, RN · Mar 13, 2012

Are you going to be taking an Associate's or Bachelor's program? If its Associate's, you could look up any additional classes you might need for the BSN programs and knock those out.

Kendel.G · Mar 14, 2012

I'm working on my ADN and then hopefully doing an online BSN right after graduation. Good idea to get the classes for my BSN done in the mean time. I think that's what I'm going to do......

Thank you all for being encouraging!

runforfun · Mar 14, 2012

Not sure where you are, but in TN, you can take A&P online through RODP and it is accepted by most colleges. I would look into an option like this, it frees up time to go to Europe with your grandparents, and allows you a lot more flexibility to work during the summer. I would imagine a chemistry class would be more difficult to find, but pairing A&P online with a non-lab class online in the summer is a lot of work, but doable, even when working full time. I would just be prepared to set time aside, and possibly not sleep on your vacation-depending on the start date.

Also, a lot of schools offer full summer sessions as well as "summer I and II" or something like that depending on where you are. Look into colleges near you where you might be able to take the course(s) you are looking for during the second half of the summer, so as not to interfere with your trip. While the courses will be even shorter than the normally shortened summer classes, it can be nice to knock it all out in a short amount of time-just be prepared to really devote yourself to studying, as you will cover a lot of material in a short amount of time.

Getting your CNA license is a great idea if you are absolutely unable to take any summer courses. In addition, you could possibly look at volunteering at a local hospital or nursing home, or even non-nursing related volunteer work, to strengthen your application when the time comes to apply.

Hope this helps, good luck to you, and enjoy your vacation!

nguyency77, CNA · Mar 14, 2012

Hey Kendel,

I agree that you should take BSN pre-reqs while you're at it! Might as well save yourself a little time, right? We're kind of in the same boat.

I talked to my counselor last semester and she was like, "Oh yeah, you can definitely take Pathology at the same time as A&P I." I was planning to apply to nursing school for the fall term, but then I talked to the nursing department and they refused to let me take pathology until I finished A&P I. Waste of a semester, since that pushed my Pathology II and A&P II to fall semester.

You gotta love clueless academic counselors. :banghead:

Kendel.G · Mar 14, 2012

Thank you all so much for the advice! I live in Palm Springs, CA (Which is a pretty isolated touristy town) and we only have one community college in our area and one CSU school (that wouldn't take me on such late notice). But the thing with my community college (for some reason this school seems to think its really special in a lot of ways -its not- so it should make its students jump through all these ridiculous hoops) A&P 1 and 2 have to have labs (from what I've heard TONS of dissections). They won't accept your application if you don't have the labs- so online classes would be out unless I had the labs :-(

What I've decided to do is map out the requirements for my BSN and just add those into my schedule (especially for the semester between finishing and applying). Luckily, I have a good friend who is a semester behind me, so she's going to take the pre-reqs for the pre-reqs over the summer and we'll be on the same schedule after that :-) so we can whine about pre-reqs together :-)

nguyency77- I HATE counselors with a passion, if I hadn't taken their advice I would have crashed my pre-reqs instead of keeping my Humanities courses I had already registered for! O well, water under the bridge (now I avoid the counseling office like the plague!)