groosegroose

Elena, have you emphasized at all the fact that English isn't your first language? That might help, since you do have a trickier task than those of us taking tests in our native language.

I realized recently I have an unusual luxury, in that I literally have nothing tying me down and I can basically move wherever to pursue work. Unfortunately, this is also tied with a declining budget post-school expenditures. I'm graduating in January, taking NCLEX in February. Assuming I pass the first time, does -anyone- have any advice about the optimal strategy for pursuing a job? My NCLEX/first licensure will be in Ohio. Should I get a reciprocal for one of the compact states in order to have more options for pursuing a job? Should I just get a reciprocal agreement for a place like CA where I have family to crash with if my funds run out due to not finding a job in a few months? Any advice?

As someone who's currently in nursing school, I just want to say, the people to pity are those going into nursing for the money/employment and not because they really want to do it. I am already seeing it with some people in my class who simply don't have the disposition to be nurses. It feels like toil to them. It's thankless. Those of us inclined to be nurses are already doing much better. You're competing with them now, as am I, but I suspect they'll jump on the first chance to leave nursing/have less patient interaction in a few years.

My nursing school clinical instructors (all experienced nurses, Masters students) certainly proved themselves vicious and confirmed the stereotype, but I've been thrilled to find during my preceptorship that floor nurses are a different species entirely. The nurses out in the field have been so wonderful. I suppose my nursing school just attracts nasty instructors.

I wanted to do something meaningful and help people. I had this idea in mind of working abroad with Doctors without Borders. Now I'm just nervous I'll become a RN and kill someone because I won't know what I'm doing.

I'm halfway through an accelerated second degree BSN program and I just feel completely, and totally unprepared to be an nurse. First of all, when they were teaching us skills here, we would be shown a video, then perform it once in lab (one day a week), and then the instructors get outraged with us when we can't do it/hesitate to do it on a live patient in clinical. They think reading something in a textbook once, practicing once on a dummy (literally once) and then watching a video of it performed is somehow preparation. I am so sick with how unprepared and awful I feel about this. And I feel like I'm not worse than anyone else, but because I am open about lacking confidence, the clinical instructors are especially hard. Is this normal? I feel like I'm basically being thrown out onto the floor with absolutely no real additional knowledge I had six months ago. I'd transfer but I don't think my GPA is high enough (got a C in pharm and a C in another science class here-- and probably will get a C in peds if I pass it).