Pinning Ceremony for nursing students

[Peetz]

I am graduating in the spring of this year, and it is a tradition to have a pinning ceremony. Can you tell me how your college works your ceremony? Do they provide the pins? Do they " throw" you the party or do you "throw" it for yourselves? I am having a very hard time with the fact that my school dose NOTHING to give us this ceremony, it is all student run, paid for and coordinated. It just chaps my hide that we are expected to give our selves this " important traditional ceremony". Maybe it is because our " lab fees" were increased by 1000.00$ per term last year, with NO improvements in lab. ( we were told it was really for the general fund only). Oh, and to frost my chapped back side even more, the pin for the ceremony is 45$ ( that is the cheapest one) and most of the class can not afford that after the 135% tuition increase per term.

Is my situation the normal? Or are we getting jipped? IMHO ( In my humble opinion) There are few things more pathetic that throwing yourself a party!

[Spacklehead, MSN, NP]

My BSN program had a very nice pinning ceremony for us when we were in our senior year (this was 13 years ago). The SON reserved the concert hall for us, student volunteers put together a slide show, and we (as a class) voted on which professors would pin us, do the readings, announce our names, etc. I believe the whole ceremony was less than an hour long. We had to wear all-white, but it could be nice clothing of our choice (skirt, dress, etc.). The only thing we had to supply money for was the pin. The SON also had a nice reception for us afterward at the student center on campus. It was held the week before formal graduation from the college.

Graduation was done in two parts (which was nice). First was the big traditional ceremony which involved all the schools and programs (but no individual names were announced - just the program was announced), and then about a half-hour after that ended, we broke up into our individual schools and had a smaller ceremony somewhere else on campus. This was where our names were announced and we received our diplomas and awards. It was really nice because the nursing class only had about 35 students in it, so it went quickly!

ETA: I couldn't imagine NOT attending my graduation ceremony! I worked sooo hard to make it to the end and to not have it culminate in that celebration would have been very disappointing to me (as well as to my family).

[DoGoodThenGo]

This, to me, is another example of how distorted the idea and vision of the pinning ceremony has become (I'm not singling out or criticizing this particular poster -- it's a common idea voiced here). Students planning and putting on their "own" pinning ceremony makes exactly as much sense as having students plan and put on their own commencement exercises, which I doubt anyone would suggest. It's not "tradition" for students to plan the ceremony -- the tradition is that the school put on the ceremony, the same as colleges and universities provide the commencement exercises for their graduates. And students have no input into the commencement beyond, perhaps, choosing a few speakers (which is how pinning ceremonies used to work, back when they meant something). "Pinning ceremonies" have gone from being the official graduation ceremony of a (hospital-based) school of nursing to being some sort of great party that students put on for themselves and they pretend it's something official. By all means, throw yourselves a great party -- you've certainly earned it -- but don't call it a "pinning ceremony," because it's not.

Twas the *capping* , pinning and oath ceremony with more emphasis on the former that was part of every nursing program graduation,diploma or college/university until rather recently. Major difference was that with hospital based diploma programs, that is all there was, one got one's diploma, cap (or stripes), and pin all at one go. Colleges of course had two parts, one was the capping/pinning which could take place before or during the actual degree graduation, and the general awarding of one's degree graduation ceremony.

Even as caps were being phased out by floor nurses, many student nurses of all programs still wore them right up until the late 1980's or so, and thus such students had the traditional capping and pinning graduation. However as nurses have moved away from wearing uniforms both as graduates and students, much less caps, the whole thing was seen as rather antediluvian in many quarters, especially the lamp, oath and cap thing. The whole thing seemed to fly in the face of moving nursing education out of hospital programs and the new image of a nurse as a *Professional* degree holding college graduate.

Just as with whites, caps and such, wearing one's school pin, once part of one's uniform (often by dress code), has mostly gone away as well. Again, many modern nurses felt "why bother" spending funds and such on something that will be chucked into a drawer and never seen again.

Being as all this may, it seems many student nurses still see the pinning ceremony (with or without caps), as fullfilling one of it's historical functions, linking graduate nurses to those that came before, and perhaps feel "cheated" by their school's reluctance to plan much less offer the thing.

Have even heard of students requesting to have their old school's cap resurrected (at their own cost), for graduation, only to be denied by the nursing department.

As another poster put it, the profession cannot have it both ways. Either one wants to be a degree holding professional and all that goes with it, or.....