Education advice needed

I had 4 kids when I began nursing school, the youngest was still in diapers-the oldest in middle school. I started out part time for my pre-reqs but by the time I got into clinicals I wanted to be done, so I went into the full time(RN) program. You will find a balance. I would take my 2 youngest to McDonalds play land and study for hours while they ran and jumped around.

As far as jobs went I got my CNA lic and worked part time weekend nights at both the nursing home and the hospital. I found there were actually times I could study at work because it was night shift. Granted it was the hardest job for the smallest amount of pay I had ever worked for. But it had benefits too, I could see 1st hand what nursing was all about, I had a ton of reference material at my fingertips at the hospital, I could look up patients meds lists and H&Ps for what ever topic I was lerning in school and see the disease process 1st hand. By becoming a CNA 1st made my transistion into clinicals much easier.

My advice is get your RN 1st, you will only need to sit for Nclex once that way!!

Also--you say you have a 1.5 year wait before you can get into the program/...if I were you I would take some BSN courses, as you never know you may want to get your Bach someday and by staying in school you will maintain your good study habits.

First of all. You can do it. Yes, there will be insane moments/weeks/months. But you won't go insane (permanently anyway:) )

While on one hand it would be nice to do the LPN route first - I will say at my school, that one year of LPN is considered to be more difficult than RN. Because so much is condensed into one year.

I recommend you get your CNA and work at a hospital - that's one most of my fellow students do. It gives you real life experience, and let me tell you - it has helped a ton in nursing school. You go in already knowing so much, as well as being able to interact with patients.