lukeslichy

I work at the Minneapolis V.A. as an ADN. Anywhere will tell you BSN is preferred. It may be hard to get a job right out of school but get some experience at LTC or TCU and keep applying, you will eventually get in somewhere if you are persistant.

Hello! Welcome to MN. Eagan is a great area tons of hospitals and healthcare facilities around to apply at. I graduated two years ago, in general what I have seen from my classmates is it takes about a year of working in a TCU or LTC for you to get into a hospital job. I am not sure how/if your cardiac experience will help since it is so limited. Definitely apply to everywhere you can, but to be realistic you may have to work in a TCU for awhile before you can get back into a hospital. I was lucky, I got into a hospital with a 2 year degree after only 4 months in a TCU but only because I had worked as a student nurse at the hospital. BSNs are preferred of course but 2 year R.N.s do get hired in hospitals still (I am not sure if you are a BSN or not). Anyway best of luck to you! If you have any other questions I could help with please feel free to PM me.

Suburbanite here... Personally I enjoy living outside the city in a southern suburb so I will give you my opinion. Houses are cheap. The downside to that is having to commute in to the city. I work at the V.A. in Minneapolis. I absolutely love it and would never leave. The pay and benefits are amazing (to me at least). I commute about 35 min each way, which is a bit of a drive but it's worth it for me to not have to live in the city! I actually have heard some of my co workers complain even though they live closer and within the city if they hit traffic it takes them longer to get home than it takes me. Check out Lakeville, Rosemount, Farmington, Apple Valley areas, these are all really nice places to raise a family if that's your ultimate goal. Check out google maps too it can tell you commute times at different times of day. That's all the advice I can offer you!

This might be too late for you, but when I was in nursing school I just bought one edition older of each book. It worked for me. The page numbers didn't line up (there is rarely new information in books it's mainly just swapped around so the publishers can profit) but that's an easy fix, you just read about the subject matter. I would also recommend not buying books until after you start the semester, some books we had to buy we barely used and were available for use in the library the one or two times you needed them. There are some you will use all the time though, like fundementals.. It's tricky but I ended up spending about $200 on books while my classmates spent over $1100.... Good luck!