Research Papers?

MB37 · Dec 11, 2007

My psychology degree from a really pricy university (I had a full scholarship thank God) qualified me to keep the bartending job I'd had for the last two years of undergrad...then to get a few more after that...a friend got offered a job making $25,000 counseling inmates at a prison in Missouri...she kept bartending too. You can also teach school in many states while you work on getting an education certificate. Mainly, a psych undergrad degree qualifies you to go to grad school and get more heavily involved in research, or to eventually get sick of tending bar and apply to an Accelerated BSN program. I knew another girl who was pre-med, and she got pretty much all As so I'm sure she got in, I just lost track of her after graduation. I was planning to become a psych NP when I started NS, but now that I know more I'm really thinking CRNA. Plus you don't need an undergrad degree in psych if that's something you're interested in.

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Dec 11, 2007

Dismount off of your high horse about having a BSN degree. If your are really all that, why don't you have your MSN or Phd?

I am currently disabled, am going through a six-month course of chemotherapy for cancer of the colon and I spend my free-time when I am not bogged down with the side effects of the drugs or symptoms of my illnesses helping students, many who are grateful for the help. I spent many of my working years precepting and helping new grads and new employees acclimate to their new work situations. I didn't sit back "eat the young", let them sink or swim, or watch them flounder. I hope you find nurses who do the same for you as you enter the profession and that you return the same kindness to the newbies who follow along behind you. If I get a little rude or condescending it's because of frustration with the negative attitudes of the ones I am trying to help. No one starting out in a new profession should be harboring any kind of negative attitudes about it. If I had an MSN or PhD would you still have the same opinion of me? I think so. I've read your other post about getting along with classmates. It takes a lot of energy to insert ourselves into the business of others that could be better utilized by minding our own business and concentrating on learning our lessons in nursing.

I know a nurse that has a BSN, she only got it because the hospital paid for it, she said it didn't change anything for her. All it was, was literally writing a lot of research papers.

Too bad for her. Did it ever cross your mind that she went for the BSN for the wrong reasons? Maybe if she had to shell out her own money like I did, and wanted it in the first place, it would have meant more to her. And, by the way, I went to a huge urban university at an eastern college (not here in California) for my BSN. I wanted it badly. What an education does for you is help to increase your knowledge base and give you more to access to information when we are problem solving. So, does many years of experience. You do know that this is what RNs are trained to do--problem solve? The more you can input into solving problems, the better you are going to be at it. Why wouldn't you want to know as much as possible? Why would you dispute the worth of getting this experience whether it be through years of experience, a higher education or working in many other facilities to observe and learn the ways they do things? It puzzles me that one would be in the educational system but condemn other forms of higher learning as being worthless. It makes no sense. It's like biting he hand that feeds you.

And, I know a lady, who has been a nurse since 1969. Let me put my ADN program mind in motion here, let's see...38 years she has been an RN. I did the math and that is six years more than you. I asked her if she had a four year degree, she said no because she never had good a reason to get one, she has had a fulfilling career without it. She seems very smart, confident, and from some of the stories she told me, she has leadership skills.

I don't doubt that she has the skills. As I said above, experience does contribute to ones knowledge base. But there is always more that can be learned. Always. She just doesn't share that view. However, one doesn't know what they are missing of a higher education if they have never been exposed to it, do they? You are arguing about something that you know nothing about because you haven't experienced it. It takes one to be on a high horse to know when someone is on a high horse. But some of us have earned the right to be there.