Do you find it hard to tolerate Gen Ed classes after nursing school?

locolorenzo22, BSN, RN · Oct 10, 2006

If you're getting old, so am I. The school required me to take ENGLISH 1 of all things, even though they gave me credit for english 2! So, I'm taking a course with these students who don't post online until 10 mins before the lesson is taken off the system. No chance to comment on their posts or to show that I'm trying to take this class seriously....

Writing papers for this course and my nursing seminar in 2 different formats is driving me crazy! I think the professor is curving papers and at least I'm up near the top, havent got below a 90 yet....too bad I can't say the same about my nursing classes!!

dani_girl · Oct 31, 2006

Some gen ed classes really bug me, because in some of them 85% of the class is required to take it and resent it. Also because of the moronic "introduce yourself" stuff in the begining. I always get a class with all the girls giggling and saying:

"Hi I'm Missy.. and I am going to be 21 in 19 days!!" and all the girls clap like this is an acomplishment.. Last semester I said my hello spiel and the teacher actually asked me when I would be 21.. I clapped my hands and said in a really high pitched valley girl voice "Like, 4 years ago!!!!"

Yeah, no one laughed but me and one other woman.. :)

Tweety, BSN, RN · Nov 1, 2006

I cringe at the things I did and thought when I was fresh out of high school. And I wasn't very serious about college either. I wouldnt' dare judge anyone. LOL

Judging from some of the posts on this forum, nursing students don't have the license on maturity either.

luv4nursing · Nov 2, 2006

Some gen ed classes really bug me, because in some of them 85% of the class is required to take it and resent it. Also because of the moronic "introduce yourself" stuff in the begining. I always get a class with all the girls giggling and saying:
"Hi I'm Missy.. and I am going to be 21 in 19 days!!" and all the girls clap like this is an acomplishment.. Last semester I said my hello spiel and the teacher actually asked me when I would be 21.. I clapped my hands and said in a really high pitched valley girl voice "Like, 4 years ago!!!!"
Yeah, no one laughed but me and one other woman.. :)

I would have laughed :) I know what u mean too....I was in A&P II over the summer with a lot of 19-20 year olds. Im 26 and started feeling old for the first time. They were all like "WOW, YOURE 26!?!?!?!??! U dont LOOK THAT OLD!! I thought u were, like 21!" lol.....

dano · Nov 2, 2006

I'm with you too, but I've always been serious about college. In high school I wasn't wasting my own money by screwing off, I would be in college.

I'll spend 3 hours in a lecture in the nursing building and then go to the student center to eat lunch and I feel like I left campus.

slou! · Nov 2, 2006

There are exceptions to the "traditional college student" acting like you wrote. Trust me, they are NOT all like this. I can see where you are coming from, because I see this every day at my school, but I hate that it is becoming a stereotype. Not all college students straight out of high school are disrespectful and not committed. I am 18 years old and just graduated last June, and I am definitely both respectful to my peers and teachers and committed to my school and school work. Just because a student is young and in college doesn't assume that they are not serious about college or professional. I know this type of student exsists, but there are many more who are dedicated to their career and school work. I'm sorry you are dealing with such students, but it's not all of them. I feel like I am in the minority on this forum. I mean I know I am, because I know this site is for nurses more than anything and they would be the majority of this site, so obviously I would be the minority, but I am seeing a lot of posts about how "just out of high school" college students are not serious in their work or disrespectful

I know you didn't mean it this way, and I totally get where you are coming from because I know of some students who do fit your description, I just wanted to let you know we are all not like that! :)

RN34TX · Nov 2, 2006

Some gen ed classes really bug me, because in some of them 85% of the class is required to take it and resent it. Also because of the moronic "introduce yourself" stuff in the begining. I always get a class with all the girls giggling and saying:
"Hi I'm Missy.. and I am going to be 21 in 19 days!!" and all the girls clap like this is an acomplishment.. Last semester I said my hello spiel and the teacher actually asked me when I would be 21.. I clapped my hands and said in a really high pitched valley girl voice "Like, 4 years ago!!!!"
Yeah, no one laughed but me and one other woman.. :)

Now that made me laugh!

I didn't start LPN school until I was 25 and frankly was probably not mature enough to do so at age 19 or 20 so it was best for me to wait.

Now flash forward to age 32 and going back to school again this time for RN.

Try being a CNA for a couple of years, then an LPN for 5-6 years surrounded by 19-21 year olds whose resumes consisted of graduating from high school and working at The Gap.....yet they seem to already know everything there is to know about nursing.

Don't you know that most told me that they were not going to be lowly floor nurses upon graduation like I was, they were going to immediately snatched up by employers as new grads to be flight nurses, take travel jobs to Hawaii or California, or go straight to CRNA school.

The CRNA kid cracked me up the most. We took micro together and he wasn't even passing, because it was the teacher's fault of course.

When I told him that not only would there be more difficult coursework than micro ahead of him, that he'd also need some ICU experience before getting accepted to CRNA school, he was bewildered and responded with "That's stupid. What does ICU nursing have to do with being a CRNA? That just bites and I'm only going to a CRNA school that doesn't have such a stupid requirement."

I thought, oh if only the rules were made up by 19 year olds who wouldn't be so stupid as to have such requirements for CRNA school. I knew at that moment that I was getting old because I probably would have said the same thing at that age but wouldn't admit it to myself at the time.

RN34TX · Nov 2, 2006

There are exceptions to the "traditional college student" acting like you wrote. Trust me, they are NOT all like this. I can see where you are coming from, because I see this every day at my school, but I hate that it is becoming a stereotype. Not all college students straight out of high school are disrespectful and not committed. I am 18 years old and just graduated last June, and I am definitely both respectful to my peers and teachers and committed to my school and school work. Just because a student is young and in college doesn't assume that they are not serious about college or professional. I know this type of student exsists, but there are many more who are dedicated to their career and school work. I'm sorry you are dealing with such students, but it's not all of them. I feel like I am in the minority on this forum. I mean I know I am, because I know this site is for nurses more than anything and they would be the majority of this site, so obviously I would be the minority, but I am seeing a lot of posts about how "just out of high school" college students are not serious in their work or disrespectful
I know you didn't mean it this way, and I totally get where you are coming from because I know of some students who do fit your description, I just wanted to let you know we are all not like that! :)

You are so correct and please do not take this as a roasting of young people fresh out of high school.

Truth be told, I am jealous of someone like you.

I wish I had my act together at age 18 and was one of those people who got a BSN by age 22, but I was not mature enough to take on that kind of challenge at that age.

Some in my general ed classes were committed like you are, and I wish that was me at that age, but it wasn't. That's why I'm in BSN school now at age 36 instead of 18 or 20.

So now all I can do is laugh at the 2000 decade version of the 1980's -90's me because I thought I knew it all back then.

And going back to school in 2002 showed me that things had not changed except in terms of clothes and music styles with young people.

stpauligirl · Nov 2, 2006

I have found, that after progressing through nursing school I find it hard to take classes with the general college population (mostly traditional students straight out of highschool). I get so irritated with some of the immature attitudes, disruption, and general lack of commitment. Most of my classmates in nursing have a professional attitude and I guess I am just spoiled. I am taking speech this semester which is a requirement for all majors at my school. Luckily, I signed up for the online study and after the first speech, the only students left are those who are truly committed to doing the work and making the grade. I see alot of posts from nursing students about things that non-nursing students do in gen ed classes that tick them off, so I assume that I am not alone. Or maybe I am just getting old.:gandalf:

Reading through some of these responses makes me think of a very young girl in my A&P1 class who's hero must have been Britanny Spears according to her wardrobe. She eventually withdrew and signed up the next semester with one of the "easy" professors (everyone who fails the first attempt in A&P signs up for that guy to salvage whatever they can anyway, she later on told me that it didn't work out for her in his class either....she now decided to become a "horsetrainer" instead of becoming a nurse....made me chuckle inside since as a horsetrainer you need to distinguish between the front end (anterior) and the back end (posterior) of a horse, too, don't you?????

dani_girl · Nov 2, 2006

Slou! Hey I know there are some great young un' out there.. infact on the same side there are some very childish "old uns" too! :) I look really really young ( its the puddgy cheeks!) so to have your prof. listen to you talk about your ambitions and all he wants to know is my drinking age.. kinda agravating.. :)

Yeah, I realized I was old when in A&P II I got invited to a "thank goodness its over party" from the girls in the class and realized it was so I could be the "buyer" LOL.

tofutti · Nov 3, 2006

You know that human development psych class so many of us have to take for a prereq? That should make us all more understanding of the developmental tasks that a 18-21'ish year old is working on.

So if they see everything in black and white, and think they can take on the world and know everything...so what? It's their developmental job. We probably did it too.

The most surprising thing I learned in developmental psych was that we keep going through these predictable developmental phases all our life! Like, the thought patterns and concerns of a 40 year old are just as predictable as those of a 15 year old.

Wild.

That being said, the non-serious students were quickly weeded out of my world as I progressed up thru the pre-req's...you don't see too many goof offs in the second semester of a hard science series!

:lol2: Tofutti