Needing encouragement and insight

[gingie1987]

I've just started my 4th of 6 quarters and I'm having a hard time remaining objective. I could really use some encouragement.

The Low Down

- my school changed the curriculum and pre-reqs for the nursing program after accepting my cohort and didn't tell us about the extra pre-reqs until the second week of our third quarter (don't worry; previous education has my buns covered but other classmates are now in a mad scramble trying to get the extra credits)

- I'm fairly certain the dean of my program hates me since I'm not a sheep. I refuse to go to the BSN program they are trying to force all graduates from my program into, and am instead looking at an RN to MSN program

- we have absolutely no say in our schedule. We sign a sheet halfway through the quarter for registration, but it doesn't tell us what days, time or where our classes, labs, or clinicals are. We are not given that information until a month before the new quarter (is this normal of other programs? I spent 2 years signing myself up for classes, and I feel up to the task of doing that now. I hate being treated like a child)

- any requests for scheduling changes are refused unless you're someone special, and you're told that the school expects your given schedule to be your priority regardless of whether that schedule allows you to work or not. (For the record, my student loans only cover so much. I need to work to make ends meet. In my first quarter I was working 3 jobs at 35 hours a week and got a 3.9 overall; now I'm down to one job and 8 hours a week with a 3.7)

There's a lot more going on. My clinicals got screwed up (clerical error on the schoolsschools part) but due to the nature of summer quarter, which we HAVE to take, I'm afraid that if I alert anyone in power to the loss of hours I'll be out of the program, etc.

Is this normal of nursing programs?

[Ashes172, BSN, RN]

Honestly, this sounds like it's well within the norm for nursing school. They work really hard to set up clinicals so there isn't much say in scheduling that they have hence not many options for you. You made it past the half way point. Just hang in there. Personally, I wouldn't rock the boat. Just buckle down and hang on for the ride.

[Ashes172, BSN, RN]

When I went into nursing school literally ever semester my friends and I would say "it'll be better next semester once we just get past this class".... It was never better. I know it's hard(not just the classes, the emotion mind games that is nursing school) just hang in there, it won't last forever.