sh1901

I'm hoping to get some advice regarding ACLS. I'll be graduating in December and they are offering an ACLS course for us to take in October so that we would have that certification when we graduate. Do you think that it is worth the effort mid-semester to take a weekend to get my ACLS certification or should I just wait until after graduation? Any advice would be great. Thank you so much!

Ours is 75 with 70% of your grade being from exams throughout the semester and 30% being from the final exam.

I'm 33 and in my last semester, but there are MANY folks older than I am (both male & female) in my class - so please don't let your age be a hurtle for you...you will have other hurtles, don't create one that isn't really there! I would think that both CNA and Pharmacy Tech would work out well. With the CNA position you would get more hands-on patient time, even if it is just bedpans and such. Many new student have to get over actually touching the patients, so you would be over that already.

Well, after all this hard work, we find out at orientation this semester that we will probably NOT have a pinning ceremony at the end of the semester. I'm kinda upset about this. Our first semester they started hyping up the pinning ceremony, how moving it is & that it was such an important rite of passage. Apparently, they were blowing smoke up my rectum...grrrr!! Apparently the reason behind this is that the instructor who normally heads up the planning of the ceremony in on sebadical this semester - really? You are going to deny a class of graduating nurses of having a pinning ceremony because someone is on a sebadical? Are you seriously unable to take any extra time out to do this? I would not even mind working on it, but apparently at our school you need a faculty member involved or it doesn't happen. Am I wrong to have my nose so out of joint over this?

I had the same suggestion as Silverdragon...as a student I would find it very useful to have someone come & talk about the different areas of nursing. Have you thought about doing a quick survey of your classmates to ask what they might be interested in?

I use good old fashioned pen & paper. I also use a digital recorder & use it to "fill in the blanks" after class. Our instructors post their powerpoints as well and I print them out before lecture and will use them as well. Be sure you don't take so many notes that you confuse yourself. We have a guy in our class who does that frequently. Good luck!

If you are going to volunteer for something where you will have hands-on with patients, make sure you check to see if you need a preceptor present. I know that we had to have one present when we were doing community service that involved hands-on.

Were they to send the background check to you or to the school? Relax, make a couple phone calls. :)

I think that you really need to think about this test anxiety thing and if you do decide to go back, you need to seek out some support to deal with that. If you are going to have that much anxiety over an exam at school, what are you going to do when it's the NCLEX? I'm really not saying this to be mean - I used to have really bad test anxiety & worked with the academic support office at my school while I was still doing my pre-req's so that I could get past that. I know you have a lot to consider and I don't want to put more fuel on the fire, but it would be heart breaking (in my opinion) to make the commitment to go back, get through and then not be able to pass NCLEX.

Good Luck with A&P...my best advice for A&P is that when you get that blank diagram of something that you need to learn (muscles, nerves, organs, etc.), don't fill it in until you've had a chance to make a bunch of copies of it so that you can keep doing it over & over until you could do it in your sleep. that will come in handy when you start your nursing classes...not having to think about where the appendix is frees up your mind to concentrate on the signs & symptoms of appendicits...hang in there - you can do it!

I'm almost 33, but there are plenty of other student in my class at NS that are 50+ and I don't think that any of them feel that they are over looked or treated unfairly. As for the nursing shortage - well, I think that it is difficult to determine if the shortage is a myth when we are still in a financial downfall and most places are limited for financial reasons rather than staffing needs. I just don't see how they could NOT need nurses when we have such an aging population in the US...but I could be wrong. I'm reserving judgment for now...ask me in January when I'm looking for a job...I may be singing a different tune!

Gee...anyone get the sense that there is some tension with the start of the semester?? (BTW, that was sarcasm)

Hi zc727 - I think that it really varies by campus. We needed to have our "packets" from the book store for our orientation for 101 (which is typically your longest orientation). Did you get any letters from the school stating what you needed? If not, call the nursing office for your campus and they should be able to let you know. Good Luck!

Hey Paco386 - Thanks for the encouragement. I have indeed thought about how I can use my education degree, I guess that I just get frustrated that I've had that degree for 10+ yrs and its just been sitting in my safe collecting dust while I worked in a non-related field and yearned to go to NS. But...that is the past, this is the present and the future is just waiting for me!! I'm sure your law degree will come in handy! You can help the rest of us understand all these laws related to medical care!

I'll be 33 in a few weeks and will be finishing NS in December. I have a full-time job, husband, 2 kids in middle school and my Mother In Law lives with us. If you want it bad enough, you make it work regardless of what else you have going on. BTW, I could also kick myself for not going to NS right out of high school...instead I have a very useless BA in education...boy do we make bad decisions when we are young.

You can check with kinko's - they offer binding, but I'm not sure of the cost. It is true that unbinding your books in NS is a good idea. I've done it...Those books are HUGE and weigh more than you would think. Good Luck!

Shaunta20 - I'm so sorry you had to go through this - professors come in both varieties (good and bad). My dad died 3 1/2 weeks into my last semester of pre-reqs...I was taking an online course and the online professor did not believe me, even when I presented him with a copy of the obituary. I had missed an exam and he was unwilling to let me retake it because he wanted a weeks notice that I was going to miss the test. I'm so sorry I could not tell him ahead of time that my 50 year old father was going to die unexpectedly - how inconsiderate of me. At any rate, it was after drop-add & I was so upset & could not really think straight on what to do. A friend told me to talk to the dean of student affairs & see if they would let me withdraw from the course (I had already tried getting that office to intervene with the professor - it didn't work), they did end up letting me withdraw, but I lost the cash for the course and I still had to retake it which pushed me back yet another semester for starting NS. All I can say is hang in there and it will all work out one way or another. I'm starting my last semester of NS next week and it's worth all the BS I had to deal with to get here!

I have the perspective of both the nursing student and someone who works in higher ed. I know that you want to get a jump on your prereqs, but isn't there something that you know you need to take regardless of what they accept? Can you start with that? Your biggest problem right now is probably that they are completely overwhelmed - I work at a graduate school and this week is our orientation week with classes starting next week and its insane here! I'm taking 10-15 minutes now to goof off on AN, but have been going non-stop since about 7am (no lunch break, only had 2 bathroom breaks). I'm sure they will get back to you. Maybe wait until next week and then send a follow-up email to see if they've had a chance to review your transcripts. I'm sure they are inundated with applications, emails, etc. this time of year. Good luck with everything, I'm almost done with NS, but it seems like yesterday I was in your shoes!

Hi everyone - I'm going into 204/205 in the evening/weekend program at Allegheny Campus. I thought I saw someone say they were starting 101 there. I'm not on here all the time, but at least 1 or 2 times a week. I'll answer any questions you might have about the evening/weekend program or whatever in general for the Allegheny Campus. Best of luck to all of you!!

So far, I've lived by, "I laugh because otherwise I'd cry"...last semester was extremely tough for me, if I hadn't been so exhausted, I would have cried, but I felt that was a waste of precious energy. In my school, last semester was considered the "weeding out" semester...we lost many of our fellow nursing students. Those of us that survived were not smarter, we made it by sheer determination. I still have nightmares about it - honestly. BUT...it was completely worth it. I'm proud that I had the will to make it and my confidence is just a tiny bit better because of it. Hang in there - and know that however you are feeling, there are other who sympathize and there is always a shoulder to cry on - even if it is virtual on AN!! Just take it one day, one task, one chapter at a time.

I work a full-time job and I'm heading into the home-stretch here with my final semester. I won't lie - it's hard. You will have a lot on your plate, but it's not impossible - it can be done. Most of the folks in my class work, and many of them work full-time. Sometimes, it's as if you have NO LIFE...but you keep the end goal in mind and stick with it. My best advice when working and going to school is to make sure that you have a study schedule and do your best to stick to it. The most important part of that is to make sure you are current with your reading...you see it written in almost every thread asking for advice and it's so very true. Falling behind in reading can be detrimental to your success in school. Other than that, just remember that this is something that you WANT!! If you aren't excited about it, you may be in the wrong place. Enjoy what you are learning & somehow it makes it seem less painful! Hang in there newbie...you can do it!

I have the littman classic for my stethoscope, but other people in my class have others & they seem to be fine. Over time, you will find out what works best for you and may choose a different stethoscope and may not...if you think that you can hear things ok with what you have, you should be fine. Test it on someone, put it up to their chest, how well can you hear their heart beat? Put it up to their back, ask them to take a couple deep breaths - can you hear the air moving in and out of their lungs clearly? finally, put it up against their lower abdomen - can you hear movement in the intestines? If you can - you're all set. Try not to stress about it too much. I have the Saunders review & it's excellent. This is my last semester and the book has been helpful in more ways than just NCLEX review. Sometimes, they explain things in that book better than what I am getting in class. As for scrubs...I have 2 sets. My reason is this - when you are working on the floor (clinical or for the future on the job) - you never know when you might get something on you that you may not want to "wear" all day. Think urine, vomit, feces, sputum, etc...would you want to wear that all day because you have only 1 set of scrubs. This has come in handy more than once. Best of luck for your upcoming semester!!!

We didn't have classes over the summer either and that wasn't by my choice. If I'd had classes that I could have taken over the summer, I would have. That said, I did enjoy having time off. I have used my time to study some NCLEX, do some reading (both school related and non-school related) and see my family. Nursing school is stressful & hectic whether you have the summer off or not. Honestly, my biggest concern is getting "back into the swing of things" when I start back up next week. Best of luck to everyone this semester, whether you had the summer off or not.

I always do a major cleaning/organizing before school starts, but I also find that a cleaning project usually ends up being my distraction mid-semester when I really deep down don't want to study for something. I'll convince myself that life simply cannot go on until the baseboards are clean, or the linen closet is organized or whatever is convenient. It's a sad, sad mental state brought on my stress...or at least that's my story & I'm stickin' to it!! :)

We get a lot of that in my school. Each semester we have an "orientation" for the semester, which is a day the week before classes that we have to come in and they update us on everything for the semester. Well, last semester, our clinicals were listed as ending at 1:30pm on our class schedules. Now, the majority of my class is working adults, many of them with families & we all had planned our lives around the 1:30pm end time. We get to our orientation and they tell us that the clinicals will now go until 3:30pm. We all thought it was strange that the end time was 1:30pm, but when we asked about it we were told that what the registrar gave us was correct, only to have them change their tune. One instructor told us that we had to be flexible. It's completely frustrating. Oh and BTW, the instructor who told us that we had to be flexible also told us that our schedule from the registrar was our contract for our times - but that is when we had an issue with the start time on another class. I guess you get whichever story works for her when needed.