PineappleCrush

My husband and I are both nurses and we tried to join the Navy Nurse Corps together but he was accepted and I wasn't (he's ICU, I'm Med/Surg and the Med/Surg board filled before they could even review my kit! But they will see me again next year until they accept me!!). What the recruiters/detailers were telling us was that they had a 50 mile radius that they HAVE to put you in. Us both being nurses is a little more simple than your situation, but I would think it would be somewhat similar. For example, they told us that one could get stationed at the San Diego Medical Center and the other could get stationed at Camp Pendleton. Not exactly what we would hope for, but the 50 mile radius thing was comforting that we wouldn't get stationed in completely separate states or something. No guarantees, though, you're here for the Navy (or whatever branch you choose to join), and your wife is there for the Air Force. Definitely check out joint bases and whatnot. My husband is stationed at Walter Reed in Bethesda and apparently they have Navy, Army AND Air Force nurses there, which I didn't know that they stationed Air Force there, but they do! One of the pluses of this area, though, is that there are literally a TON of bases in the area for every branch (definitely within 50 miles of each other), so perhaps Bethesda/D.C. might be an option you two could pursue? Good luck, though, and make sure you make BOTH of your detailers know what's going on!!! Things can very easily fall through the cracks if you're not vigilant and keeping up on your recruiters and detailers about your situation.

My husband and I are both nurses, but he got into the Navy Nurse Corps and I didn't (long story, but I'm trying again next boards! lol). He got stationed here in Bethesda and went through ODS in February and we've been living here ever since he graduated! 1.) We live in Rockville, which is fairly close to Bethesda, there is a Rockville Metro stop. According to my husband, there are a lot of coworkers that live in the Grosvernor/Strathmore area (another metro stop, the one just North of Medical Center where Walter Reed is), as well as White Flint and Twinbrook. Just a word of advice, though, each ODS class is different, but in my husband's class, there were only like 4 other people coming to Bethesda, so try not to get your hopes up for finding a roommate at ODS, just a warning! My husband had classmates going to Guam, Japan, Spain and even one went to Peru... haha. So everyone is going everywhere and are from all kinds of specialities. 3.) I can't really speak for on-the-unit camaraderie since I'm not IN the Navy or on his units or anything (although if you can't tell I live vicariously through him most of the time hehe), but him and his classmates at ODS were all very close at the end. It was really neat seeing them all at the little banquet dinner they had the night before graduation. So suffice it to say that you will make some really good friends at ODS, that's for sure!

My husband just started in the ICU at Walter Reed and he takes the Metro in to work; they DO NOT openly offer parking for employees at Walter Reed. My husband said they shared a statistic in one of the orientation classes: there are about 11,000 employees vying for 3,000 parking spots. Do the math :) There is a Metro stop on the RED line called "Medical Center" that stops literally across the street from the base. They will pay for ALL of your Metro fares if you choose this way, so I would highly suggest looking for housing/apartments near the metros! We live about 7 miles away from the base in Rockville, but it takes about 30 minutes (at the absolute fastest) to drive there because of traffic and all the lights on the road. One day I was driving there to go to the Navy Exchange (the store they have on base) and it took me 50 minutes because of construction. Oy. It only takes 13 minutes on the metro, but you also have to factor in walking time from the apartment and whatnot. My husband leaves here at 0550 in order to get to his unit, change into his scrubs and be ready for report by 0645, so that's really not that bad (IMHO). But to each their own! :)

Just dropping in to provide a little goodie: I saw you guys posting about FB pages and whatnot. The Officer Development School in Newport, RI has a FB page that is AWESOME with all kinds of pictures and updates from current students going through the process. I nearly lived on that page when my husband went through ODS for nursing. Search "Officer Training Command Newport" and you'll find it :) Tell your family members to join, too! It's a great way for them to see what you're doing when you're gone.

Not particularly: Our first choice was San Diego because we live in Phoenix, Arizona so San Diego would have been a much closer move for us, but they had zero openings there. So our second choice was Bethesda, and they had openings! :) We're super excited either way, but knowing that he's going to be working at Walter Reed makes it like a dream come true in our books

Yikes! My husband just got into the Navy as an ICU nurse (but I missed the Med-Surg cut off because there were too many applicants) and I was hoping to piggy-back onto his placement at Walter Reed in Bethesda, MD, but maybe that might be too much to hope for... I guess I'll find out when he graduates from ODS and we move out there in March! I wish it would be easier for us military spouses to find jobs!!

My husband is at ODS right now, and will be stationed at Walter Reed in March! He is an ICU nurse with 1.5 years civilian experience and he was offered either 20k for 3 years or 30k for 4 years. He took the 4 years :) Unfortunately I didn't make the Med-Surg boards this past round, so I'm just going to try to get an ICU job when we move to Bethesda and apply again as an ICU nurse. It kills me seeing him be in and me not, though! ha ha ha. Someday I'll get in... :***:

I like Koi (Katelyn Mock-Wrap) and their cargo pants and Wink because they have a great mesh inner-pocket that is perfect for your phone (and their cargo pants!). I can't get enough cargo pants... you can never have too many pockets!!

Thanks for the ODS clarification--I just wanted to make sure haha :) And yes, I have all of my letters, all my interviews and all of the background clearance and other paperwork done. Unfortunately with the holiday next week, I had to schedule my MEPS for Wednesday at the earliest, but at least now it's scheduled!! I can only hope that I make it in on time. I think my recruiter is kind of trying to lull me into reality, saying that *if* I get wait-listed (which I'm trying to prepare myself for...:uhoh21:), I guess they added 17 spots last year after they closed the billets? So she's hoping that will happen again, as am I!!!

Hello, SailorWifey! I submitted my PPIS/NASIS and all the paperwork last week and FINALLY got clearance to go to MEPS on 9/5. Unfortunately I was caught up in paperwork mishaps with some of my medical history, but it's all saved now. I am REALLY hoping I make it in, just wish I could have gotten some of my medical records quicker! I guess I'm doing decently on timing, though, since I only started the application and talked to my recruiter in the last week of July. But still... I'm super nervous since I've heard it's so competitive!

I just wanted to say THANK YOU to everyone on this forum!! My boyfriend and I have both hit our 1 year nursing experience post-school and are applying for Direct Accession, him for ICU/Critical Care (that's what he's in now) and me for Med/Surg. We both have our PPIS and NASIS forms in and are waiting for medical clearance to do MEPS (oh the drama of medical histories). Our recruiter just happened to go on her honeymoon last week so we've been kind of in the dark. It seems like we're playing the "hurry-up-and-wait" game at the moment for MEPS and then hopefully onward! All of the questions and everything have been so helpful, thank you! And thank you to everyone who is responding!!! This might seem a silly question, but ODS is the five week training, correct? Not the twelve week one?

I am a new grad as well and left my first job after about 3 months. It was too toxic of an environment for me, my preceptor spent more time talking on the phone or leaving the floor than mentoring me, I then precepted with four other people making it very hard to actually get a solid routine down, and then after a mere 5 weeks on orientation on the Progressive Care Unit I was in, in an inner-city hospital of 600+ beds, they wanted me off orientation and wouldn't give me any extra time on orientation due to budget constraints. I was just like you, crying on my way to work, crying on the way home from work, crying DURING work.... It was awful. Management seemed sympathetic on the outside, but they essentially told me to suck it up or leave and "step down" to Med/Surg. And so I left. I'm now on a Med/Surg unit at a different hospital but still within the same organization and it is better. The people at my new job understand that my time was hard at my old place and they try to help me as much as possible. It's hard because the unit is super busy with rapid discharges and admits, but they help when they can. It's important to find a place that has that kind of attitude. I still cry sometimes because I can just get emotional when I get overwhelmed (because I still do get overwhelmed, and probably will for the next year or so) and the management is very concerned when this happens. It's a sign of a good place. You'll find your place. Be open about your experience and talk about how things should be better, and how you would work to help make things better in your future jobs :) There is still a lack of empathy from "higher ups" concerning stress levels, sick leave and all that kind of stuff, but that all boils down to money, unfortunately, and I've quickly found that money is EVERYTHING in healthcare. Its depressing and hard to deal with sometimes. On a random side note, I had a patient who was going to be discharged with a PICC line, but the PICC nurse was near the end of her shift and apparently management had been getting on her case about staying late, so instead of doing the PICC line and staying a little over her time, management told her to leave and do it tomorrow so the patient got needlessly charged for an extra night's stay because they didn't want to pay the PICC nurse a little overtime. Sad.

speaking as a new grad myself (graduated in august 2011, started work in october 2011), i can definitely vouch that school does not give us any heads up as to what "real world" nursing is really like. i graduated from a bsn program so it felt like half the time we were writing papers during school. and then in our last semester we spent nine shifts in our "immersion" where we were to take on a full patient load and do everything on our own, even calling docs where appropriate. but even that was nothing compared to what "real world" nursing is. it was a bit of an abrupt/rude awakening for me, that is for sure. call me naive, but i honestly did not realize how positively stressful nursing is (or at least on the med/surg unit that i am on!). and maybe it's just one of those things that i need to get used to as a new grad, like getting a good routine down and just getting used to environment, but i can definitely see why some new grads choose to leave the profession quickly. i already know that as much as i love the job, i don't see myself doing hospital bedside nursing in 10 years. i just don't want to live with all that constant stress. then again, this could just be something that i still need adjust to and i could wind up doing bedside nursing for 30+ years. tl;dr it's just that for now, still in my i still go in--everyday--and i don't plan on quitting any time soon (although there are those days!!); it's just the picture of nursing that school painted was very, very different than what it really is. that could be part of the problem.

That's really neat that the Juniors plan the Senior's pinning ceremony! That's kind of a cool tradition for your school. Reminds me of Juniors planning Senior Prom in high school

in error, see comment below :)

Oh, wow! Pinning is still a very big thing for us! I just graduated from Arizona State University's BSN program (class of 60 students) last August and our pinning was part of the graduation ceremony. ASU has two ceremonies: Commencement with the whole university and the star-speaker (blah, blah, blah). Half the time a ton of people don't bother with that because it's for the entire university, so the ceremony is HUGE, only doctoral candidates walk across the stage, etc., so you're literally just sitting there for like three hours listening to speeches. Boring. But Convocation is where the individual colleges do their own ceremonies and have class speakers, etc. In Convocation, we elect our class speaker, a couple of the deans do their own talking, they call the names of the students, we walk across the stage in our cap and gown, get pinned by a faculty member that we voted on, shake hands with the dean, and then get handed our diploma cover. So they just do it all in one go for us, which keeps the tradition alive, but not in it's own separate ceremony, which has always worked for us. The "pinning" simply consists of us putting the pin that we got at the Lighting of the Lamp ceremony at the beginning of the program on a long ribbon that we hand to the faculty of choice and they put it on us like a necklace. Not exactly a pinning, but it saves time lol. It works really well for us to just have the pinning be part of the graduation ceremony.

I've been gone for quite awhile! School has a habit of picking up when you least expect it to I'll try taking a stab at a couple of the questions.... Learning Communities will be your lifeline. It's AZ law that clinical groups can be no larger than 10 students, so these Learning Communities are basically your clinical/lab partners. The 10 of you will have the same FOR (Faculty of Record) that will teach you in Lab and will oversee everything you do in your clinical areas! :) The only impact that the Learning Community has on your schedule is where you'll be at for clinical and what you're doing in lab because you'll go through the different stations in lab with your learning community. Weekly schedule looked ROUGHLY like this (I'm doing the times and stuff from memory) for me when I was an Accelerated Junior 1: Nursing Fundamentals (NUR 310) on MF, from 7:30-10:00 Foundations Nursing Practice (NUR 394) on M, from 100-12:30 (hardly ever went that long) Pharmacology (NUR 311) on W, from 9:00-12:30 Professional Nurse Attributes (NUR 330) on W, from 1:45-4:45 (hardly ever went that long) Tuesdays and Thursdays were our days for clinical/lab. Those will vary, but expect to be there from 7:30/8:00 until at least like 1:00pm or so. Schedules change, though, and ASU loves to change things around, so I wouldn't be to confident in saying that your schedules will be exactly like this, but I would wager a small bet that it will most likely be similar. I'm not sure if I should be telling you guys this, but you'll find out eventually regardless. The Lighting of the Lamp will take place on May 16th from 3pm-5pm (but it usually gets out earlier) on the Tempe campus at the MU in the Ventanna Ballroom. You'll need to dress up for the event (professional, not like ballgowns or anything). You'll get to walk across a stage, get your nursing pin, hear some speakers, etc. etc. It's a really neat event and a great way to start off your nursing career. It can be pretty inspirational :) Financial Aid: I can't really help you there. I qualified for subsidized loans, which are the best because you don't have to pay them back until 6 months after you graduate. But my parents kind of handled all the loan stuff, I don't honestly know too much about it. Living: Downtown there are a couple places. There is a place called The Met that is right across from NHI-2, as well as Alta Lofts. They are both pretty expensive. However, there is a place called Camden at Copper Square which is pretty nice and a lot cheaper. Plus, Camden is really close to the Mercado, where all of the labs are and the LRC, which is kind of like our nursing library and computer commons is. Most of our classes are at the Mercado, too! There are students there, I know that for sure, a couple from my cohort are there. There is also a place right across from the Science Center, that is caddy corner to Camden called Renaissance Park, but I don't know what their prices are like. I hope that info helps you guys!!! Relax while you still can--nursing school is quite the whirlwind experience that you'll love to hate, but wouldn't change it for the world!! :heartbeat

The start date for ALL Summer students (Mayo Jr 1, Downtown Jr 1, Downtown Sr 2) is May 16th, the same day as your guys' Lighting of the Lamp ceremony! :) Your end date should be around August 2nd, and absolutely no later than August 5th! So you might be getting a small break (depending on your finals) before you start and you'll get a break before class starts in the Fall!! Be very, very thankful for that... last summer some of us had only a weekend between Spring and Summer, then we only had 4 days between Summer and Fall... talk about ROUGH! Also, I know for us Senior 2's (we already have our class schedules, for once) and last summer as a Junior 1, we most definitely had an exam the day after Memorial Day. Soooo try to keep that in mind if you're planning a vacation over Memorial Day!

:ancong!: Aw, I still remember getting my letter... probably one of the best days of my life, still! :) Just a note for those of you on the alternate list: For my cohort (Summer 2010), ALL 10 of the people on the Alternate list are in the program. Unfortunately, the summer program is a lot more expensive and I think students didn't really realize that until they got in, and therefore dropped out of the running. So, keep your heads up. You may never know what will happen! CONGRATS again!

I remember asking this same question in the Summer 2010 thread hehe And I am going to tell you the same thing that those wonderful people who answered told me (and what tttt essentially said as well!): Enjoy your time now! Once you start your program (no matter when, or even what school you choose to go to), you will be very, very busy. I know all nursing students are pretty Type-A people who want to have something to do and be proactive, but enjoying your free time before you start is the biggest suggestion I can have for you right now. I know, I know; it sounds stupid, and I remember scoffing when they told me that and thought they were all crazy. But it is the unfortunate truth. I live at home with my family but I still hardly ever see them, no joke! And my friends? Not really! I see my nursing school friends all the time (which 95% of the time we're studying, the other 5% we're blowing off steam after a long day/week/test), but my friends before nursing school I see very few and far between. Don't get me wrong, though, there are probably other reasons why I don't see my friends as often as I would like. There are many people in the program who still manage to have social lives, go out, etc. There are many people who are married and there are also several people with children--and even within those people, there are a couple that have three or four kids!! We even had one girl deliver her first child in November (yes, she carried her child through school and clinicals up until the day before she gave birth!!). So it's definitely doable to do all of the above--it just makes things a little more difficult. I highly suggest color-coordinated calendars and lots and lots of list-making :) Most of the teachers are great and they'll give you the information you need to know in order to be successful. If you really HAD to study something before you get into the program, I would suggest what tttt said and study Patho. But, I also tried that as well despite what the people on the forum told me and even did study sessions with a friend that got advanced with me, but to be completely honest it did not help at all. One nugget of information that you should DEFINITELY carry with you through nursing school: You are in nursing school; not med school, not pharm school, not epidemiology school. NURSING school. You won't need to know a lot of the specific information that you learned in A&P and Patho. Even though knowing the intricacies of Patho (and it's super fascinating!) is great and you WILL need to know most of it in order to explain the disease process to your patients, will it help your patient to manage their Diabetes if you know that the inheritance of the DR3/DR4 markers on the HLA complex on chromosome 6 increases the likelihood of developing Type 1 Diabetes? Not in the slightest!! But, knowing that there is a familial component to acquiring Type 1 Diabetes and knowing that can be crucial to the prevention of the disease--that is important for your patient to know, and therefore an extremely important component of your patient education and prevention screening tools. See, there's a fine line between the information you need to know and how you need to apply it--a fine line that students (including myself) are still struggling to figure out in our Senior 1 semester because the exams in nursing school are all very application based, not brute memorization of facts and numbers that happens in all of the pre-req classes. That was a pretty big smack across the face for me in 310 haha. Pharm was great because it was a lot of memorization, but in Nursing Fundamentals and in all of the classes in Jr2 + you'll have to be purely application based, which is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Don't get me wrong, either, there will still be numbers and facts you'll have to memorize, it's just that the questions on tests won't be so straight forward like, "What area in the upper respiratory system does asthma effect?" or something. It's much more application-y. [/soap box] This is a great question, because I honestly have no idea even though I'm graduating in August. ...LOL! I've heard that you should start applying for New Grad RN jobs about 3 months before you graduate because the process can take awhile (it's usually a three or four interview processes to get a job! Eek!). However, you won't even have started your clinical immersion by that point, so I think that 3 months is too early to be honest, but that might also be because where I'm sitting is about 4 months until I graduate (August 5th, baby!) and I am terrified at the thought that I need to be getting ready to apply for jobs lol. As far as the outlook goes--not good for New Grads. For experienced nurses with 1+ years of experience, the market is pretty okay, but New Grads are a huge investment for hospitals because of all of the training. Add in all the turmoil with ACCCHS and the AZ Legislature and it makes Arizona a not-so-favorable environment for New Grads. My friend who just graduated from ASU in December was THE ONLY New Grad hired for Scottsdale Healthcare that wasn't already in the system. So, if you can get a job at a hospital as a CNA, PCT or Extern... DO IT!!!! (I highly suggest looking for externships near the end of your Jr 1 semester). It will make you so much less stressed when it does come time to apply for jobs since you'll already be in the system and you'll be privy to the in-house jobs that aren't offered to the public yet. Although I do not know how many ASU New Grads don't yet have jobs, there are several that I know of, unfortunately. But keep in mind, though, it depends on how picky you're going to be about your first job and where you want to work. If you're willing to be flexible, then chances are you'll be more successful. If you ONLY want to work in the NICU on the day shift... well, good luck with that, but you might be looking for quite awhile. Flexibility in nursing is huge! :) ...this is a much longer post than I intended it to be... hahaha. It's a combination of avoiding an Evidence-Based Practice research paper and all sorts of other homework and my own little soap box that I need to get off of haha With all of it's problems, complications and all the painful hard work you have to go through to get there (i.e. nursing school ), a career in nursing is still SO, SO worth it. So try not to get discouraged by anything you may hear from any of us upper ASU classmen or even any other threads on this site. Nursing school will change your life :) :heartbeat

haha, oh dear! That's not a very encouraging sentiment to leave them... haha! It's just all very overwhelming, pretty much all the time. It's a lot to adjust to at first, but I don't think you ever really get 100% adjusted until finals week at the end of the semester to be honest haha. I really cannot fathom medical school--it can't be much harder than what we go through, I swear! It's SO totally worth it in the end, but I know personally I wasn't prepared for how much they would be throwing at us at first haha Boo, go little kids and growth and development!! I talked with a connection I have in Student Services and she stated that the letters are slotted to go out on Tuesday next week! If that helps at all... :) tttt is right, you'll start clinicals in the second week, but I feel the need to define "clinicals." Clinicals in Junior 1 are not what you think of; unfortunately, you won't even step into a hospital until Junior 2. That's just how ASU runs their program. The first week is a lot of introduction/orientation stuff, but in lecture they will throw you straight in. The first part of clinicals will be your Well Elder where you essentially interview an elderly person about medical history, personal history, etc. They'll focus on communication quite a lot in the first couple weeks. Then you'll concurrently work in a preschool, gathering information from them as well, making a teaching plan, and teaching them a lesson. You won't move into Long Term Care until you're at least half-way through, and there you will be doing typical nursing skills like transferring patients, bed baths, feedings, passing medications (injections, yay!), wound care, etc. So you won't necessarily be thrown into a hospital in your first week or anything like that, which is kind of nice, but you won't get "clinical" experience with necessary skills until about the halfway point of Junior 1 semester (which would be around weeks 6-8). :heartbeat

Hey, everyone! I just stumbled across this forum (during class, lol), but I am one of the students from the Summer 2010 Accelerated Cohort (I'm currently a Senior 1, yay!). I just wanted to say GOOD LUCK to you all!!! I can still remember the days of rampantly checking my mailbox every day for several weeks to see if the letter comes... and how ASU just loves to try your patience (they continue to do it during the program, so watch out!)! If you have any questions, feel free to ask! It might take me awhile to respond, but I do promise to respond at some point in the near future! :) I look forward to meeting some of you guys--as fellow Accelerites, we all have to kind of band together to get through the summer months. It's definitely a different experience than all the other cohorts have, but my cohort is seriously the most amazing group of students I've ever met and I feel that we have bonded so much closer than most of the other cohorts because of our experiences together. Get ready for a wild ride :heartbeat P.S. If you don't get in this time around, please don't give up. I had to apply twice and got in the second time, and I am SO THANKFUL that I didn't get in the first time because my cohort is just simply amazing. Here's a quote that has fueled the past 13 months of my life: "Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; they are there to show us how badly we want something." -Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture I have my fingers crossed for you guys!

You guys are so awesome! You all have really great attitudes, that is so great to hear/see/read! It always happens every year that people from allnurses.com want to meet, but then usually don't! I met like 10 other people from my cohort on allnurses.com and we didn't really meet over the Orientation, but we did all meet at Lighting of the Lamp! Then again, our Lighting of the Lamp was BEFORE school started, not the first week of school like it is for you guys. I wish I could have met some of you guys, too! I am in CCNS so I inevitably saw some of you guys, I just didn't know who you were hehe. For those of you not in, KEEP YOUR HOPES UP! They literally admitted some of the alternates in my cohort the Friday before school started, so you never know! Good luck on your finals (if you have any left!) and have a great winter break everyone! :heartbeat

There are 100 spots for the summer?! Say whaaat? That is a LOT of spots! ASU hasn't taken on 100 people in one cohort in like 2 years! dutchessca: I would most definitely call Student Services, something is fishy with that. You should have gotten your letter by now, for sure!

We start back for Spring on January 18th! :)