I am struggling with a decision on whether to take non-nursing classes (not the set of 6 pre-req.s but the others required for ADN...like nutrition, A&P II, micro, sociology...) separate from or WITH my nursing classes. I have looked at my schedule and I would be taking from 12 - 14 hours every semester if I do the load-it-up method. And I would need to take 2 classes each summer. How difficult is it to do clinical work and have 2 or 3 other classes besides? My goal is just to really focus on school during the day time and weekends and leave the weeknights open for my kids/spouse. Is that reasonable or am I fooling myself? I plan to get up and go to school early each morning - to class or study - and stay until 4:30 each day. Treat school as a job and if I'm not in class, study. My nursing advisor said clinicals are 2 days from about 6:45 to 2:00 then one additional afternoon each week. I would have to fill in the other classes around that. From reading these boards, I'm wondering is there some "hidden" time that clinicals takes - I've read about working on care plans and going up to the hospital the evening before...sounds like lots of time.
I would get everything I possibly could out of the way. I am a first semester nursing student with afull time job, husband and two children. This summer I will take my micro a&p 2 and hps 110 which is probably insane--that is 10 hours in the summer which is only 10 or 11 weeks long compared to the normal semester. I cannot handle the thought of taking anything else with the two nursing classes I will have to take this fall, they take up time in class, in clinical and home with studying and care plans and whatever else your instructors may throw at you. Best of luck.
Phil. 4:13 ----cajunnga :)
Hi all -
I am struggling with a decision on whether to take non-nursing classes (not the set of 6 pre-req.s but the others required for ADN...like nutrition, A&P II, micro, sociology...) separate from or WITH my nursing classes. I have looked at my schedule and I would be taking from 12 - 14 hours every semester if I do the load-it-up method. And I would need to take 2 classes each summer. How difficult is it to do clinical work and have 2 or 3 other classes besides? My goal is just to really focus on school during the day time and weekends and leave the weeknights open for my kids/spouse. Is that reasonable or am I fooling myself? I plan to get up and go to school early each morning - to class or study - and stay until 4:30 each day. Treat school as a job and if I'm not in class, study. My nursing advisor said clinicals are 2 days from about 6:45 to 2:00 then one additional afternoon each week. I would have to fill in the other classes around that. From reading these boards, I'm wondering is there some "hidden" time that clinicals takes - I've read about working on care plans and going up to the hospital the evening before...sounds like lots of time.
Specializes in critical care; community health; psych.
There are a couple of people who are doing this at my school. Most students don't get in without having completed most everything before hand but a few slip through. I know one who is taking Nursing I, pharmacology, micro and micro lab. He is a rather embittered individual at this point. His heart is no longer in "it" and it shows. He's totally lost his sense of humor and his clinical skills/general knowledge base have lost ground in comparison to the rest of the class.
When you go home from a clinical, you will probably be responsible for preparing care plans. My instructor required three, plus a lab and med sheet. They are very time consuming. Plus you will be responsible for preparing for your theory class and let's not forget the paper writing and IPR's. There is paper writing in nursing. I wrote around 10 of them this semester. In my program, we also had meet once a week for a wellness class. This is something that does not appear on any schedule and it's not really a course but you'd better be there. It had a paper too! It gets worst with each succeeding semester. I'm looking at 8 lecture hours a week in second. Up from the current 4, plus they throw in a required PE class one hour a week.
Keeping in mind your proposed schedule, it is not reasonable to expect to do well, keep your sanity and take pre-req/co-req courses IMHO.
I took the A&P's and micro separate from the nursing, I took those in the summer intersessions or in the semester before starting nursing. But all through nursing I took at least two other classes with the nursing classes. They were the soft classes like US history 1 & 2, Developmental Psych, Communications, sociology, etc. I did this mainly because I needed to be a full time student - 12 or more hours per semester - in order to get scholarships. I only worked part time, about 10 hours a week for spending money. I don't know how anyone works full time and goes to school full time. My hat is off to them. I considered school to be my job while I was in and dedicated about 60 hours a week between classes, study groups, writing papers, etc. When I look back on it now, I can't believe I did it.
Now that I work 36 hours a week, I have a hard time taking classes more than one at a time. I'm just too old and tired and can't keep as focused. Right now I'm studying World Populations and upper level stats. I just really don't care about the topics (unlike actually being in an active program) and they bore me to death. When I get into my master's program I hope to be reinvigorated and more interested.
I took the A&P's and micro separate from the nursing, I took those in the summer intersessions or in the semester before starting nursing. But all through nursing I took at least two other classes with the nursing classes. They were the soft classes like US history 1 & 2, Developmental Psych, Communications, sociology, etc. I did this mainly because I needed to be a full time student - 12 or more hours per semester - in order to get scholarships. I only worked part time, about 10 hours a week for spending money. I don't know how anyone works full time and goes to school full time. My hat is off to them. I considered school to be my job while I was in and dedicated about 60 hours a week between classes, study groups, writing papers, etc. When I look back on it now, I can't believe I did it.
Now that I work 36 hours a week, I have a hard time taking classes more than one at a time. I'm just too old and tired and can't keep as focused. Right now I'm studying World Populations and upper level stats. I just really don't care about the topics (unlike actually being in an active program) and they bore me to death. When I get into my master's program I hope to be reinvigorated and more interested.
I am currently taking ALL of pre req's at one CC and then transferring to the ADN program at another. My adviosor HIGHLY recommends that ALL classes are taken care of beforehand so that I only have my nursing classes and clinicals left over. I talked to her about taking micro my first semster of nursing school and she has NO NO NO!!!!! But now reading all the work that is involved in researching care plans etc I think it is is good to do everything first even if it adds a year!
I am currently taking ALL of pre req's at one CC and then transferring to the ADN program at another. My adviosor HIGHLY recommends that ALL classes are taken care of beforehand so that I only have my nursing classes and clinicals left over. I talked to her about taking micro my first semster of nursing school and she has NO NO NO!!!!! But now reading all the work that is involved in researching care plans etc I think it is is good to do everything first even if it adds a year!
I would say that it depends on the program you are in. I am in an RN program, AND NOT ONE OF THE STUDENTS WHO TOOK OTHER science CLASSES first semester passed. Our school has a very, very high NCLEX pass rate so tends to "weed out" students fairly quickly. In fact, less than half of those who began with me first semester have made it to this 4th semester, and this semester the nursing alone is 14 units. My guess is that about one quarter of the students I am with now will fail this class based on the classes overall test scores.
I had all of my co-reqs and electives required for the degree finished before I started the cores. If your program is as competitive as this one you won't want to even TRY to take other classes. In fact, during orientation first semester they flat out told us if you try to take other science classes, or more than perhaps one other, or if you work more than half-time, statistically it has been shown that you WILL fail. They have recently changed the pre-req's because of this.
I would say that it depends on the program you are in. I am in an RN program, AND NOT ONE OF THE STUDENTS WHO TOOK OTHER science CLASSES first semester passed. Our school has a very, very high NCLEX pass rate so tends to "weed out" students fairly quickly. In fact, less than half of those who began with me first semester have made it to this 4th semester, and this semester the nursing alone is 14 units. My guess is that about one quarter of the students I am with now will fail this class based on the classes overall test scores.
I had all of my co-reqs and electives required for the degree finished before I started the cores. If your program is as competitive as this one you won't want to even TRY to take other classes. In fact, during orientation first semester they flat out told us if you try to take other science classes, or more than perhaps one other, or if you work more than half-time, statistically it has been shown that you WILL fail. They have recently changed the pre-req's because of this.
There are six nursing programs in my area. Just about all of them have changed their requirements so that you can't even apply to nursing school without finishing all pre-reqs beforehand, or they give priority acceptance to those who do.
So it's probably a good idea to do it that way, even if it is optional.
There are six nursing programs in my area. Just about all of them have changed their requirements so that you can't even apply to nursing school without finishing all pre-reqs beforehand, or they give priority acceptance to those who do.
So it's probably a good idea to do it that way, even if it is optional.
I went ahead and enrolled full time for the fall semester, which means I will get most of these classes out of the way to start clinicals in January. Sounds like it's the right thing to do if I want to be sane.
I went ahead and enrolled full time for the fall semester, which means I will get most of these classes out of the way to start clinicals in January. Sounds like it's the right thing to do if I want to be sane.
cajunnga
17 Posts
I would get everything I possibly could out of the way. I am a first semester nursing student with afull time job, husband and two children. This summer I will take my micro a&p 2 and hps 110 which is probably insane--that is 10 hours in the summer which is only 10 or 11 weeks long compared to the normal semester. I cannot handle the thought of taking anything else with the two nursing classes I will have to take this fall, they take up time in class, in clinical and home with studying and care plans and whatever else your instructors may throw at you. Best of luck.
Phil. 4:13 ----cajunnga :)