Full Time Work - Full Time School. Tips!

use a calendar and plot your life by the second (only kind of kidding). Use a calendar that everyone can write on. block out your work time, your class time and your study time (sounds stupid, but you WILL need it). Add in kids events and choose which ones you can and cannot attend because you WILL miss a lot of their things. You will need to let them know ahead of time (explain at their level) that when you're in school that you need to do school things sometimes and just reinforce this as you miss things. Meal prep is huge for me because it means I eat healthy. I'd leave the grocery shopping to hubs and spend a couple hours on a day off doing meal prep. I made menus ahead of time with a shopping list so I knew exactly what needed to be purchased for that week.

You're gonna lose your sanity and will likely cry over missing important events but you'll need to get over that guilt and remember you're doing this for them AND you

good luck

I don't work but go to school full time & I live by my wall calendar! Lol good investment! Then I cross off the days as I go.

Giant calendar! Everyone is color coded! Pick and choose events, you will be forgiven I promise. Use that ONE day off to be horizontal for a few hours!! Lol that's what keeps me sane! Catch up on a show or two and then hit the books until kiddo gets home from school.

Ive worked full time as a PCT in my local hospital and part time on the ambulance here while attending a full time traditional BSN program with all your standard nursing school requirements and the following is my experience:

-i had a ton of 24 and 36 hour stints without more than an hour of sleep intermixed. if you are going to do that, dont let anyone know because no one would say that it is safe especially if you are in clinicals during your last 12 on. this may be unavoidable once or twice during school but really try to avoid it.

-I found the calendar on my smart phone indispensable ( if you dont have one, get one and learn to use it well) google calendar is great because it will sync with any smartphone and you and your husband can edit it from any PC on the planet and it will update on your phone. utilize technology!

-try to eat healthy but i will be honest and say that i just ate out every meal or in the cafeteria at the hospital and as i graduate in december the number one thing i cannot wait to do is begin picking up the peices of my overworked and out of shape corpse and rebalance my life. its only for a short time and its worth it just charge it.

-last and most importantly school is number one, if you start failing do not hesitate to pull the plug because being a pct for the rest of your life would leave you wanting more, always remember that.

what you are doing is the best thing you can do for your career and it will put you ahead of the game big time, any other extracirricular activity in nursing school is a waste of time when compared to actual bedside experience beyond clinicals.

I'm doing this right now. Everyone is spot on when they mention a calendar. How you do that is up to you -- wall calendar, day planner, phone calendar, or some other option. I actually just have a word document with all my due dates, test dates, etc on it so I can pull it up to take a look.

I don't know if you'll have days off as a new associate, but I did schedule some off days to coincide with heavy test weeks so I can study.

People freak out when you mention working full time and doing school full time, but others have done it before us. It's not impossible.

As of right now I have As in all my classes because I have prioritized all my studying and homework based on my calendar. However, I agree with mwlude in that school is priority and if I start doing poorly in my classes, work will have to go by the wayside.

Thank you, thank you!

It sounds like I need to become best friends with my planner! I decided to transfer all of the things on my paper calendar to my phone and iPads calendars so I can take advantage of setting reminders. I'm also mentally preparing myself to schedule chunks of study time into my days. I'm in a nasty habit of cramming, and that just won't work.

Hopefully I survive these last 6 months!