Pkham

Your base salary will be around that much without over time. As a new grad I was making 120k, which now I make more oh happy life. Keep in mind I am writing this from the inside of my brother in-law's garage that I pay him $1000/month. (Desperately saving to buy a house outright in another state.)

You can make it. I'm in the bay area but Davis and Sac are only slightly lower in pay while the COL in housing are almost half as cheap. My first full year of working with a few OT shifts and call and I was at about 150k gross. With day care or school for your kids, you're still going to do pretty well in that area which should start you in 6 figures base pay. Traffic is horrendous but not nearly as bad as the bay area. The most common complaint there is the heat in summer but it's nothing like Texas, or Arizona. I have a few friends at Davis and they love it.

Location: CA Experience: 1 year BSN Specialty: Operating Room Facility: VA Base Pay: $65/hour OT: 1.5 after regular shift hours. Pro's: 8 hours Annual leave + 4 hours sick leave every pay period (2weeks), pension, paid federal holidays.

I got accepted into the VALOR VA learning opportunities residency which is available in certain areas and colleges, worth a Google since it's a paid internship during nursing school. We get to choose our department and I randomly chose the OR without really knowing what goes on in there besides "surgery". It leads to a job when you graduate assuming your manager likes you which mine did. I've been an RN for a year now and in that time it's been nothing but circulating and scrubbing. I don't want to do anything besides the OR, and I can't even imagine being a floor nurse. Not everyone will agree and some will say things like you can't learn nursing unless you've been on the floor but screw that. I've got it so easy with a 1:1 patient load, actually it's usually the surgeons, anesthesiologists, scrub and me so that's like 6:1 in our favor. I get to sit down, laugh and talk to the surgery staff, and not kill myself, hate my job or cry at the end of the shift. If you can't find a new grad program for the OR definitely try to get in ASAP, you'll never leave. Sure I've done zero IV's and you know what, I'm perfectly ok with that because I've wiped zero butts and my schedule is 7am to 330pm Monday to Friday every week.

My first job is 9-5 M-F, I had no problems finding time to learn how to chart. I think a lot of it depends on your preceptor and hopefully they will help guide you with their methods for time management and little tips and tricks they've picked up.

First off, congrats on landing your very first nursing job! Here is a link to VA RN pay scales for different states Title 38 Pay Schedules - Office of Human Resources Management (OHRM) I believe with Tampa you are RN Grade 2 (BSN) step 5, or $77,096. Grades are 1 for ADN, 2 for BSN, 3 for MSN. Steps are years experience with 1-3 being 1 year each and 4-6 being 2 years each, 7 is 3 etc. 7 Years experience is step 5 if I'm not mistaken (step 3=3 yrs, st 4=5 yrs, st 5=7 yrs). It can be quite confusing and even I'm not 100% sure I broke that down correctly. VA offers great benefits and 5 weeks paid vacation a year starting day 1 ain't bad at all. I would love to life in Florida, enjoy.

Easiest- As long as you aren't scrubbing and the anesthesiologist doesn't kill anyone, OR nursing seems really easy. Review pt info, set stuff up and let the surgeons do their thing. Forgot an instrument? I'll get that for you. Of course if things don't go as planned in any field, it will become difficult. Hardest- Can't be too sure, but from this thread psych nurses seem to be angered the easiest. Must be the stress from dealing with psych patients so I'll give it to them, just so they can calm down a little. It's only an opinion post.

I'm in my final semester of nursing school BSN but I applied for the VALOR program from the VA this past summer and got a "job" as a paid intern in the operating room which is amazing. I knew absolutely nothing about the OR, but now I know it's what I want to do for the majority of my career. They also hire you through this internship so technically I have my first job waiting for me. It's a huge relief because I hear horror stories like this constantly. Perseverance pays off though, congrats!

Still alive, but barely. My baby is 9 months and doing peds and medsurg which is really helpful but hard. I also got a VALOR internship working as a circulator in the OR and it's awesome. I feel as students we don't get enough exposure to the OR and it's a shame because I knew that's what I wanted to do after being there the first few days. All that's left is 2 semesters and NCLEX then I can press the play button on life again.

You'll get a feel for the pace of the class and adjust from there but quite frankly I read 20 pages of the 100 assigned prior to our first day of instruction and that was about it for me. Everyone is different but you can decide if you want to gamble with what might be asked on a test or what might you remember during clinicals. I'm doing fine and I tell myself at the start of every semester that I'll commit more time to reading and studying but honestly, I have trouble remember what I read as opposed to what I physically do and encounter in clinicals.

Currently set to graduate 1 year from now but got a paid internship and getting $36 an hour with a job lined up after I graduate around $50. Norcal, very expensive but you can commute from cheaper areas.

Consider yourself lucky, my program has 13 ebooks totaling around $1300 + a nurse kit containing bandages, needles and what not for 150. I commute 45 minutes with a motorcycle so I'm very happy about the text being in ebook format instead of lugging around 4 books at a time. It just sucks that once the program is done you can't sell your "used" books to new students to save them and yourself some money but in the grand scheme of things, once nursing school is done a few hundred for books will be of little to no concern.

I had orientation a few weeks back but I had my uniform ordered on Amazon along with a stethoscope and sphygmometer. We learned about sim labs and got our schedule which they all picked out for us so that's a little less stress. Met the faculty and overall I'm excited and nervous to get started so I can finish and start my career. Whenever I get nervous I just tell myself that there are people already doing what I'm about to do and if they can do it, so can I. That mindset got me through basic training, and many deployments so I'm hoping it works for nursing school as well. 2 weeks of summer left!

2 years at a community college to knock out prereqs for free with financial aid, then using my GI Bill to pay for my BSN. Not only is my nursing tuition free, I'm also getting a 3k per month stipend.

Many schools value the TEAS score more than prereqs. Do extremely well on that and you should be fine. For instance I have 4.0 in prereq and overall with an 81 on TEAS and 100 hours volunteer at a hospital but was still on a waitlist. Some other people who did extremely well on the TEAS but didn't have straight A's got accepted immediately. Guess school's like great test takers to keep their NCLEX rate high. Either way, it seems like you aren't satisfied with B's and that's great but it doesn't hurt to try submitting an application with what you got. Good luck.

Wow they're only on 9? I got my acceptance last month and I was 7. I don't think it's more competitive so much as the people who applied this year actually intended on accepting and not just using SFSU as a backup plan. There's still time, have to stay positive.

I have orientation for my BSN at the end of July and start in August. I've told myself to enjoy this summer as it may be the last vacation I'll have for a while but I just want to start class already. I'm worried about the book situation as I'll be commuting on a motorcycle and I can't lug too many with me. Congrats to everybody and good luck!

Yes they have a link you can click and it's a very easy and straight forward process. You should get your email very soon.

Got this email today: Dear Fall 2015 BSN admit, Please save the date for the School of Nursing orientation session occurring July 28, 2015 from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm.This orientation and advisement session is mandatory for students who will begin the nursing program this fall semester. It is on this date that you will receive your nursing class schedule including the specific course sections in which to enroll. After working and waiting for so long I can't believe it's finally happening :)

The email said fall.

Yesterday at noon I got an email saying that I was accepted into the BSN program from the waitlist :) I can officially enjoy my vacation. Good luck to everybody and I can't wait to meet you all.

Lol no no no, I was trying to find out how I can sign up for transfer orientation because they told me that was the next step. I'm still on the waitlist and it never occurred to me that I might need to wait until I was accepted into the nursing major because right now I've only received my acceptance into my alternative major. As an update, I still haven't received word on the waitlist or my orientation.

No email yet for waitlisted (to my knowledge), I'm early on the list so I'll let you guys know the moment I receive one.

I can't seem to sign up for orientation, it just keeps looping me to a login page. Is anyone else having this problem? I can't seem to contact anyone in admissions either.

There is a link in the email they send you that should take you to the admissions page. Once there, there is a form you fill with your student ID and an option to accept or decline admission. I think that's it, but I'm not 100% sure. Here's the link Contact Us - Future Students - San Francisco State University