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Girl, first of all you made my heart skip a beat. CT is NOT "getting rid of LPNs"...they did do away with the program for several years though (you know, Rowland and that $100 million budget shortfall) but reinstated it just this year for fall 2015. I believe the next admission isn't until 2017, but I might be wrong. As for you, please try to be accurate before you scare me like that! Nursing "shortages" are everywhere, and I'm pretty sure LTC facilities are some of the best/only places LPNs can get jobs quickly these days in CT. Forget hospitals for the most part unless you're working at Charlotte-Hungerford or somewhere in the boonies--there are very few hospitals not affiliated with Yale and trying to get magnet status, etc. That being said, CT LPN pay is some of the highest in the country along with Mass, Jersey, Las Vegas, and Colorado. Depends on your finances, and you might wanna do some (med) math gauging your income now vs. that of a BSN income a lot sooner than getting your LPN and slowly working to RN/BSN. But it's not all bout the monayyyy! The last point, maybe most importantly, is do you WANT to be an LPN, or go straight into RN? I LOVE being an LPN and though my grades were good and everyone is secretly disappointed that someone "so smart" doesn't want to "go further," I am so well-treated/paid by my LTC and love being around my patients so much and so often, without loads of computer- and paperwork, that I see going to RN/BSN as a real sacrifice right now. The future? We'll see, LPN is a real foot in the door. But for now I feel the salary is so good and the work, while I'd never call it easy, is so rewarding...I'd recommend LPN school! Go with your heart girl, I wish you the best!

Proud of you, OP!! A degree in computer science will no doubt give you job opportunities once you're out by 23 (especially if you learn some programming in your free time...often you don't even need a degree). I was a lit double major and loved it more than anything, but outside academia a humanities degree is largely worthless. Points indeed for practicality, but enjoy your Woolf and Joyce meantime! You're young...and confident, and you know yourself. Invaluable. Thank you for your post and enjoy your next four years! :)

GREAT response, Scrubs911, and lol @dreamgirl--out of curiosity, why haven't you yet told your family? Is it because you don't need or really mind their approval? Pure professionalism like Scrubs911advocates is hard, especially with the abuses we sometimes endure. Nurses have to be so emotionally strong (and smart) so much of the time...the ultimate HR managers and salespeople, too! But often those abuses, awful as they feel, are superficial, and thank goodness we are confident, competent, and have enough faith in ourselves to (actually) brush them off. Family members have said horrible things to me, and I've "allowed" it...but I've actually had a lot of the same family members apologize later, come back to see me to apologize, send apology flowers. Family members always get another chance or two with me because half the time they're not in their right minds.

Know this is probably really dumb, but, could ETOH be called "ethyl hydroxide?" (I hate when chemicals dont have a nice neat name). Every ETOH patient I encounter has only had--to their desperately sincere recollection, of course--only two or three drinks. Heh. I wouldn't necessarily multiply by 2, but I'd immediately consider them to have ETOH hx. It's a deep disease man. :/

Happily I've been finding that's mostly only true for private for-profit programs (Lincoln Tech, etc) and not state schools or colleges. My friend in NJ is taking an "articulated" LPN to RN program at a county college--a year of classes and she'll be an RN--and I'm planning to do the same here at a CT community college once I finish the technical high school LPN program. BSN now....that's a lil harder...