heather925

Good luck! As a former high school teacher, I love when I see young students with an actual career goal. You should truly pursue this 100%. I wish I could motivate my niece to pursue it- As a 36 year old mom to 2, ABSN student, I wish I had pursued this amazing career earlier.

brendalwelsh- I just met your friend today, as I bought a bunch of books off of her! I was so glad to meet her (single mom to an amazing 5 year old) as I'm in school now, with a 1 year old and a 5 year old- There's hope of making it thru this program after all!

Concurrent law school!! You're wild! And I thought I was bad for going back to RN school after earning my MBA . . . Yes, there are evenings too. The clinicals occur at night too-- There are 8 hr shifts, 12 hr shifts, weekends and night shift (during the deepest parts of the night too). By the end, you will have had a bit of all of the aforementioned. SMU "owns" you fully for the year so you can not "finish" up another program/ overlap. And they add mandatory 'stuff' with less than 24 hours notice occasionally- Extra skills labs and lunch meetings. Currently I am doing three 8 hour clinical shifts a week, and I HAVE TO prelab the day before, which takes me about another 4 hours if you include my (far) commute (and I still have lecture 2 full days a week).

AMB4- Don't delay 'applying' to try and schedule the 'best time-' The no. cal. bay area schools are so impacted, you need to apply ASAP after you have your pre-reqs done. I'm at the SF campus of SMU and loving it- But as a fellow mom (little one was just 6 months old when I started and the older one was 4 years) I shared your concerns. I had to have my momma move in for the year to make this happen :)

Fellow mom of 2 tiny ones here and I'm waist deep in the SF ABSN @ SMU (+ LOVING IT!). You really do need to sign your life away for a year- There is no way around it. I had to ask my mother to move in with my family for a year (in addition to paying for full time childcare for both children) to make it happen, because even between my husband and myself, we couldn't bridge the time gap between when I leave for clinicals (5am out the door) and when childcare opens at 7am, nor could I be back in time for 6pm pick up. After acceptance but before the first day of class, the SMU staff were polite but the schedules really are confirmed late and so no clear indications regarding schedules were given. A student from the cohort ahead of me told me that her first 5 week schedule was just M-Th, released by 3pm-- Oh no, no mine-- My first 5 weeks was M, T, Th, F, Sa anywhere from 8am-4:30pm. And currently the clinical schedules among my classmates very- Many weekend 12 hr shifts.

I took pharmacology as a prereq for an ABSN program I will start this fall. It was a fully accredited online course from a community college. It was the easiest class I have ever taken- only difficulty for me was my personal scheduling- I'd read the text during my breaks at work over 3 days. Then I'd take the online exam in the middle of the night after my children/husband were asleep. There was a bit of memorization involved . . .

I found that my local library had no TEAS prep books as there are none on the market, outside of the one published by the test maker (ATI). I didn't see any TEAS specific prep books at my local bookstore nor on Amazon.com. I saw non-ATI online test prep sites (which I don't trust) and ATI's book on their site (which I highly recommend). The schools out here in CA often don't consider retest scores (only the score from your first attempt), so bite the bullet and find some cash to buy the test prep from ATI (online or book form). good luck!

I've been to a number of different colleges during my undergrad career, so i had multiple transcripts sent to my prospective schools. I just found out i was not considered for 2 schools as they were missing the official transcript from one particular private university I attended for A&P. I am upset at that private university, but won't be reapplying next application cycle since I got into my #1 choice school (they received all of my needed transcripts). I did speak with the two schools I didn't get into, and they both said that they need HARD deadlines just to help their tough job of considering applications during such impacted times. Good luck getting the transcripts in on time- sorry that you are at the mercy of others.

I took pathophysio and pharmacology from SBCC in fall 2009 and have notes/books. If you are interested in learning more and which instructor I had, send me a private message.

Congrats