Extra Years for My BSN

[Peacelove889]

Hi all,

I'm wondering if others are in the same boat as I am. I am studying for my BSN in Nursing. I have been in school for 4 years but it's going to take an extra 2 1/2 years to finish up right now. I have done some transferring because my first school was prereqs then my second school was the wrong school and the program was going to take too long, and my third school is the perfect fit. It's been a tough road because I started when I got out of highschool but because my SAT scores weren't in range of the schools I applied for, I had to settle on a private school in my area first. I've had many challenges along the way but have never given up my passion for Nursing. I want to finish and I'm determined.

Since there is 2 1/2 there was an issue with the semester after the 6 years and I had to file to appeal for more aid. My dad has a PLUS loan out on me and we have to extend it because I'm not close to graduation yet. I feel bad that it's in his name and the plan for 4 years isn't what it's going to be now.

Any form of encouragement would be nice. :) It's just the financial part of this maybe an issue with continuing my education. I don't want to give up my dream of being a Nurse and having a specialty in Hospice and Palliative Care. I have such a strong passion and drive for it.

[nandosport]

I majored in biology my first two years of college, and that was a costly mistake. My freshman year was great, but my sophomore year was ugly and it killed my gpa. My GPA went from 3.5 to 2.9 all in one year. In the fall of 2011(sophomore year), I tried to take cal-based physics I, organic I for bio majors, and calculus II along with two other college core classes. Well, you can guess how that went. I had to withdraw from physics and I got C's in both organic and cal 2. Oh, and the following spring semester I took 18 hours trying to keep my scholarship (had to have 30 in an academic year) including a lower level physics course and the second half of the organic chem sequence. Again, I made C's in the second organic chemistry. It wasn't long before I realized I was going to fail that physics course and then I didn't even show up to my last final in cell biology because I knew my academic stretch as a bio major was over. I was tired, sad, and defeated. That decision resulted in 2 F's instead of one. I remember spending most of my days crying and feeling helpless and angry during those semesters. I hadn't made any other plans besides becoming a biology professor, but I was a miserable failure as a biology major. I changed my major, but I didn't know what I was doing. I took three classes in the summer of 2012 and I medically withdrew from all 3 of them because I started having symptoms of a disease which had been previously misdiagnosed. Because of my illness and academic woes, I didn't attend school in the fall of 2012. I came back with a new major in the spring of 2013 and dropped out because I didn't like my major and I was still depressed. I was diagnosed with another ailment in the spring as well. I tried to go back to bio in summer of 2013, and I dropped out again because I wasn't happy. Starting college, I had $84K in scholarships and I lost every bit of it after that year and a half. I did more than my fair share of sobbing and soul searching (and unsuccessful job hunting) before I decided to return to school in the fall of 2013 as a pre-nursing student. I just completed my first year back in school and I turned in my nursing school application with a 3.84 prerequisite gpa (B in stats :-( ) and a 3.2 overall gpa. If they let me in to the nursing program, I'll graduate in 2016. That's 6 years for a BS degree. Don't feel bad. You're not the only one. Sometimes life doesn't happen the way we plan it, but that doesn't mean we have nothing to look forward to in the future. We're going to be great nurses.