WheatGerm

Personally, I don't care if someone has tattoos/dyed hair and wouldn't think they were incompetent. HOWEVER...this seems like a bad idea since you already know that your manager isn't super into it. Why don't you get those clip on dyed hair strands and clip them into your hair on your days off, then remove them before going in to work?

Our instructors always had us perform the task with them watching, or went in to talk to the patient about the level of care. Even if our instructor was passing meds with a few students, she would either have us wait to do the assessment before watching us do it a second time (if the patient was amenable) or she would just make sure to watch us do it another week. Personally I find some of those categories you mentioned hard to observe regardless of whether or not you were standing right next to the student! "Recognizing diversity"?? To me that would be something that is a bit hard to grade so good luck to you on that one!

I agree with Jedrnurse. Also I would say that usually the first two weeks of a program are probably fairly easy, with the least amount of work so you should be able to push through. It won't be fun, but it will be nice to have it out of the way knowing that you could still used your boss as a reference in the future.

Thank you! I just wanted to make sure I shouldn't be running out to buy scrubs...I don't have any! The last area I was in required nurses to wear certain scrub colors or uniforms from the hospital so I didn't want to waste money on fun scrubs if we weren't allowed to wear them!

Does anyone know anything about what happens after our first day of orientation? It was explained to me that there would be mostly classroom type activities for the first couple of weeks, but I have no idea on the dress code/locations of this. any ideas?

Seriously that's how I felt. I got a couple questions regarding the same topic and was like...oh no, I certainly didn't learn this in nursing school! But I must have known more than I thought I did since I passed. Apparently this feeling of thinking the questions were really hard is a good sign! Good luck to you, and even if you don't pass you just need to try again. Plenty of people on this forum have taken the NCLEX more than twice and they're still here to talk about it!

Do they have any specific instructions regarding contacting them? When I applied for my job it specifically stated not to contact them because they had too many applicants to be receiving update emails from. If there isn't that policy though, I wouldn't think that there would be any harm in following up to see.

You can't listen to other people on this one, really. You know how you were in previous school environments, so you really need to learn and take note from that. Personally I was an excellent student in high school, average in college (non-nursing degree) and then was an excellent nursing student in my ADN program. Listening to others in my program you would have thought we were going to completely different schools. I think a lot of people over studied to the point of being comical. They would rush off to the library and spend hours going over the material that was just lectured about, and sometimes the reading was only around 25 pages. You shouldn't need hours to do that! Be honest with yourself and your studying. I have found a lot of people who "studied" for four hours straight maybe studied for about 1 hour and the rest was goofing off. Just be smarter with your studying, do the reading and make some notecards and call it a day. Take a few days off, it won't ruin your grades and probably will improve them since you wouldn't be constantly cramming.

I would encourage you to think about this a bit more. Only reason being that your exhaustion working as an assistant may be stemming from the fact that you are stressed in general with school as well. Do you think you would feel different about nursing if you didn't have that pressure of grades/work? All that being said, nursing isn't for everyone. I think you do need to see if you have other issues causing your depression/loneliness that is making you feel negatively towards nursing as a career, because personally I would hate to throw away that time/money due to other issues that I could potentially control.

I don't personally have a Surface, but a lot of my friends do and love it. The fact that you can use it as both a tablet and laptop is really neat, and it is very light. You can also get a discount on it for being a student! I will say however that if you do not necessarily want a new laptop you might not need one. I know my school had requirements for what would be best and my computer was way below that (still using one from 2007!). Just food for thought that you could always see how your computer does if you don't currently have issues with it to save some money.

Did you send a thank you to the person you interviewed with? If not, you could always send an email thanking them for the interview and say that you're interested in the position and see if that gets you a response. I don't think it seems unreasonable after 2.5 weeks to check in and see what's going on.

I think maybe one of the issues at play is whether or not the new grads have had a job before. I used to work at a non-nursing job that required 12+ hour days, weekends, holidays, random hour long shifts at night, etc. I never had an issue with it, but that's probably because I have been in the workforce since 14. I noticed a lot of people I went to school with would say things about how they didn't know how they could give up weekends, but they had never had a job before and I think they didn't understand a lot of workplace dynamics as well. The dynamics thing includes following instructions from a DON, etc. and also just in general interactions with co-workers. I do have to disagree though that new nurses who say they are working in LTC since they couldn't get a hospital job are entitled. I mean, personally I wouldn't want to work in LTC over a hospital due to future career goals but I don't think that makes me entitled, just not my thing.

You could always make a quick little budget to make sure it will work for you. Obviously you can't count the benefit of having better hours in general, but I would want to make sure that with a pay cut I would be able to make ends meet. Things would go from good to bad really quickly otherwise. At the very least I would subtract that amount that you spend in childcare from the amount that you made last year and see if that is close to your new salary. Then you'll know if some other changes in your life will need to be made.

I was dropping in to say the same thing. There are fine nurses everywhere - and thank goodness for that!

Although I'm sure this would increase the amount of people continuing their education, you have to remember that everyone is not cut out for college or wants to go to college. My brother, for example, would have been able to go to school if he chose to do so. However, he decided it wasn't for him and has moved on to pursue other things. And in terms of nursing, there still are going to be qualifications that need to be met and prereqs. Just because it will be free doesn't mean the market will be flooded with these awful and unqualified nurses.... As much as it would be nice to have free schooling after you've already paid for it, hey, you learn from having to deal with loans and how to budget.

Congrats!

You might do well with using UWorld this time around! I know that helped me for sure, especially with the select all that apply questions. I think the most important part is learning how to tease out the correct answer, even if you are unsure of the concept. For example, I had a bunch of NCLEX questions about diseases/procedures I had no idea on...but somehow I must have picked enough right answers to pass. Don't feel bad about this, just a small setback. I really do think UWorld is the way to go, and I think most people on this forum would agree, based on all of the threads I read before I tested. You can do this!

Was just watching Everybody Loves Raymond last night and Ray decides to volunteer at a hospital. As he was signing in at the desk, a nurse walks past and dumps a bag of blood on the desk and says "Another one for the fridge!" and just leaves it sitting there! Then another nurse comes by with three more bags to stack on that one! Just sitting on the desk....

I think that was the worst part for me also, the students who were great in high school and couldn't handle nursing school...but honestly I never met those people. The people who did really awful in my school were the ones who slacked off and got argumentative over everything, thinking they were right and trying to catch the professors in any small errors. I agree with one of the posts above that said to get friendly with professors. Not only will they be more likely to help you out, but also it's great to have them for reference when you're looking for your first job.

Only you will know what kind of course load you can handle. That being said, if the only reason you want to switch to math is that you can start your ADN program sooner, I don't think that's a good idea. If you want to take math because you think you can handle it, then go for it. Personally it would drive me nuts to know I was taking a not required class (medical terminology) in place of a class that was required. Only you know yourself though, so think about previous school experiences to know if you can handle the work load.

You might see if you can qualify for in state tuition since your husband is in the military. I have no idea if that works at that school/in that state, but I know people who have gotten in state tuition due military relocations. Also, I think you should call potential schools in the area that you would transfer to and see what credits they accept. For example, one school I wanted to go to only accepted one specific nutrition (not Nutrition 101 like I assumed) so it is really important to check so you don't do extra work!

What is Stranger Things about? On topic, I learned about Klippel-Trenaunay Syndrome! It is a very rare disease that is without a cure currently, and involves capillary malformation/lymph system issues. I watched a video about a woman who was quite affected with it and what her life was like, since the disease primarily affected her face and one arm. Great reminder of compassionate care, and just treating people like humans in general.

Really discuss with your wife the impact that this will have on your family, good or bad. Allow her to be completely honest. Ask yourself if you have been/will be supportive of her future desires to return to school/pursue a hobby she hasn't been able to. When I met my husband, he was planning on going into the military for med school, and I really gave thought into what that meant for me (moving, time commitments, etc). I'm sure your wife did the same. However, she probably wasn't preparing for you to want to go back to school for nursing, so please talk to her and be realistic about the time it might take for you. I have to say, nursing school didn't take up as much time as other people say it does (in my opinion) so besides one full day of clinical it was quite manageable. The other advice I have is to make sure when you pursue this career that you make time for your family. You can put down the books for a half hour to go for a walk, take your wife on a date, play with your son so she can go out, etc. Just prioritize what is important to you and you'll be good to go! You sound like a nice person who has really thought about this and isn't making a rash decision. Good luck to you, I'm sure you can do it!

Do you want a job where you make a difference or have you always considered nursing? Nursing is a lot about making a difference, but if you wouldn't be passionate about it there are plenty of jobs in other fields that make direct impacts on people (eg social work, etc).

I agree, only hesitation is that the facility might have her name flagged depending on how serious her offense was. I know my school had a rule that if you were employed by a facility you weren't allowed to go there for clinical. Obviously this is a bit different with her not working there anymore, but the school might not want her there anyway. I would suggest saying that you previously worked there and want to try to get a new experience at a different hospital, you don't necessarily need to go into details. The school might not want you someone that you've already been. Ours always encouraged us to change up our hospitals each semester.