"Pay your dues" or go for what you want?

[BBeers7]

As a newly graduating nursing student, I've gotten a lot of conflicting information about where I should start off working. Some say as a new nurse, we should start from the most general floors and pay our dues like those before us did. Others say go for your dream job so you get a sense of happiness and pride out of the work you're doing and don't end up burnt out. I personally wanted to go for my dream job, but applied for both. What are your thoughts on this matter?

Thank you!

[Emergent, RN]

A lot of it depends on your personality. I work in the ER and wouldn't have been ready for that straight out of school. I never even considered it until, working in a small hospital, was floated there to help. Turns out it's perfect for me.

We've had some great new nurses start we with us. The best ones started out as ER techs. That's a very holistic progression.

Some people just do better either one path or another.

[ICU2NP]

Every area of nursing is a specialty, essentially. You'll train to learn how to work on that unit with that population. Apply to and work where YOU want to work. I started in ICU straight out of school. I've heard from our preceptors, and now that I've been a preceptor for 11+ years, I prefer to train brand new nurses to the ICU because we can shape them how we want them! No changing bad habits or refocusing what we want them concentrating on. If you think that YOU want to start on med/surg then go from there... do that. But only if you want to. If you don't - apply to where you want to work.