Howdy all, I bit the bullet and after much research, I decided on Grand Canyon! Wow, I did not expect BSN schools to be like used car salesmen--hounding me by emails and phone calls. Rather impressed on how Grand Canyon sort of left me alone, but at the same time kept in touch.
Commence my first class Sept 30th, excited, yet very nervous, as I'm not a big fan of school, LOL! I did extremely well on my Associate degree, graduated back in 2009 from Northern Virginia Community College. We shall see.
Would love to hear from past and present Grand Canyon RN to BSN students.
I don't have the APA manual because it's not a required book and we spend so much for our books already. Do you guys find that OWL has mistakes when looking at the APA manual? Also I'm living in the Netherlands and everything is so darn expensive here.
OWL is the Gold Standard, I highly doubt it has errors. tokmom is right, APA Manual is online for freeeeee. But, I don't find the online version very user-friendly, I need my trusty book. Does Amazon deliver to the Netherlands? LOL Just found it on ebay for $15.00, surely they ship worldwide? Be sure to get the blue one, 6th ed. APA manual.
Her big problems were when I used
Author/organization. (n.d.). Title. Retrieved from website
I used this because the website didn't have any kind of publishing /updated date or copyright date. She said I should have used 2014 because this is when I accessed the info. Is this true?
No. I believe the instructor may be mixing up two different rules. You were correct about the n.d., if there's no date anywhere, it's n.d. That's why APA HAS an n.d. rule, because it happens! The rule about the "retrieved date" has nothing to do with the n.d. -- totally separate issue. The rule for whether or not and when to put a Retrieved date in your reference list has to do with the information itself; is it likely to change? If the info is carved in stone and the content will never change (an article, a book, a poem), no need for a Retrieved date. If it's dynamic information that may be updated at some point, then you put a Retrieved date. The theory here is that you need a Retrieved date if the info may change, so that whomever is reading your text knows WHEN you retrieved it, basically saying that it was current info as of the date you retrieved it.
Also I referenced the CDC in text like this
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2014)
She said this is incorrectly cited, not APA.
You were correct:
First in-text: (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2013)
Subsequent in-text: (CDC, 2013)
Reference: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2013). Overweight and obesity. Retrieved from http://www.........
(2nd line indented of course, AN won't let me tab here)
When you have a new heading subheading, if just the heading falls on the bottom of the page are you supposed to use a page break/ enter so that if falls with the body of the text? Unlucky coincidence for me but two times in my paper the heading was the last line of the page.
Yeah, hit the Enter Key once or twice until it tops the next page. Don't mess with those page-breaks, they may mess up your page format.
Tokmom and Prism you guys are so amazing! Thank you for taking the time to respond to me about boring APA! I really do try to a good job on it. I'm getting all confused because each instructor has a different interpretation on it I guess!!
Ohhh, I haven't been using retrieved date on websites that will be updated because I saw so many website based resources that didn't have it. I thought including the retrieved date it was optional. Silly me!
I really do prefer paper books as well, but after 4 classes of digital books I think I'm getting the hang of it!
Thanks again you guys for responding to my post and also helping to create such a nice community here for GCU students!!:inlove:
In Spirituality there is an assignment that is actually 3 different assignments. If you do it well the first time, then you are on cruise control. After the first submission, your paper gets sent to another student to evaluate it and recommend changes (using track changes on Word). You do the same to another student's paper. Then you make your changes and resubmit for the final grade. In my case (bragging here - lol) my instructor said my paper needed the fewest revisions so he gave me a total train wreck to evaluate. For my final submission I only had to make one or two minor changes and submit. Do yourself a favor and do NOT consider your first paper a "rough draft' or you will get graded as such. Treat it like a final product and you should get a good grade. Makes the last week super easy.
That's good to know about Spirituality, thanks! I am taking my two week break and then I start. I think I'll do some reading ahead while we are away. I haven't been getting all the reading in and I want to try to get ahead!
Ohhh, I haven't been using retrieved date on websites that will be updated because I saw so many website based resources that didn't have it. I thought including the retrieved date it was optional. Silly me!
Well I neglected to add to my mega-post above to use at your own risk and verify everything before you put it in your own paper. This is MY interpretation based on how I've been graded, my incessant internet searches ( > hour sometimes for one little reference format), and of course OWL and the Bible (APA Manual). Sometimes you just have to wing it and see how it comes out in the grade, and even then (as you've noticed), sometimes you'll get different grading comments from different Instr's for doing identical things from one class to another (ex: I think I was in class 3 before someone told me to stop writing the word "Introduction"! LOL) You'd think that the Manual is black and white, do this/do NOT do that, but alas, it always seems to be a surprise, and sometimes I just have to make a "huh?" face and move on. So yeah, Prism's Rules of APA are not guaranteed to be handed down directly from the APA Gods... but it's fun to to think I know what I'm doing!
So far, knock wood, I've never had anything marked wrong on my references for format other than one time and the instructor was wrong. I've misspelled author names btw citation and refernce (I copy and paste btw the two to avoid that now!) and that was wrong but that's just a dopey mistake.
So far so good with my formatting. But I'm only 4 down and 6 to go!
Ok - I know I am going to sound like a bad student, but I just use Citation machine or Perrla to input my APA info and whatever they give me I use. On the rubrics for the assignments, the actual APA format points are so minimal that I really don't care if they mark me down. It is definitely not worth losing sleep over or wasting time that I could actually be devoting to the content on my paper. So far this has worked for me and I have only had minimal points taken off my papers - and never for APA formatting.
Noodle, I usually use citation machine as well, and this last teacher marked all over my reference pages! Ugh!
What class was this? Hopefully I won't run into her/him anytime soon. I just thank my lucky stars that there is usually is a very small number of points for APA based on the rubric.
Specializes in Certified Med/Surg tele, and other stuff.
Ouch on the paper marking! My capstone professor was picky..picky with references, but she was fair. I did use PEERLA but it's only as good as the user! I had correct my references in the PEERLA database, so they were accurate. Thankfully, it was only four of them.
I guess I'm one of those odd people that enjoys writing papers and doing research. I do get annoyed with many of these assignments, as they often seem boring and tedious, but I always find a way to make the work interesting. I've never spent more than four hours on anything so far - oh, except the CLC powerpoint that I had to basically write on my own
Silly me!
:inlove:
PrismRN
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