FiremanMike
Just a dude
- 1,170
- 737
- 113
I am in my final semester of my ADN program at a community college (nowhere near Georgia, sorry). I have an admin job at the fire department, M-F 8-4 with a small amount of flex in that schedule. I had been working at this for some time, so I completed every non-nursing class prior to starting. Each of the first 3 semesters was 2 classes, a nursing class and a pharm class, the 4th semester was a nursing class and a human growth and development class, and this semester I only have my nursing capstone course.
I am a blended student. I don't attend any lectures, which has it's advantages and disadvantages. Coming into nursing school, I had completed a bachelors in public safety online without any issues, but the depth of knowledge for RN is so much greater, so self-study (even with recorded lectures) took a SIGNIFICANT amount of self discipline and devotion. The advantage is that I only have to attend a lab once per week (sometimes once every other week) and most of my labs are in the evening.
With clinical, I have been so lucky that each course has had a weekend and evening clinical available and I have managed to get into one of those every time so my work schedule is minimally interrupted (some days I need to take an hour of vacation to get to the hospital in time). This semester is going to suck, because we have clinical 2x per week for 9 weeks.. I got saturday/sunday.. So yeah, 9 weeks of zero days off..
As to your comments on the volume of reading, that's just nursing school. Like a lot of the folks in this thread, I was a "top of my class" medic student and always looked at as one of the stronger medics on the department, but I have found nursing school to be overall difficult and requires a significant amount of work. I do think the grind of the last few semesters has improved me though, as this capstone class actually seems to be pretty smooth sailing.
I can't tell you if nursing is right for you or IT or underwater basketweaving.. For me it was originally medical school, but by the time my life was in a place that I could actually do it, I did some soul searching and realized I didn't want that life. Docs work hard, and they work a lot of hours, and I do want to slow down at some point. I went to RN with the plan on going direct to NP so that I could work at the provider level. I did find that I enjoy direct patient care as an RN more than I expected, so I think I may take a few years to work as a nurse (part-time while I finish out my time in the pension system) and then decide.
A final note on scheduling. In 2007 I put myself through the police academy (wanted to be a state fire investigator, it never panned out). That class was M-Th 6p-10p and every Saturday from 8a-5p for 6 months, mandatory in-person attendance. At the time, I was working on company so 24/48. Between vacation time and a small number of trades, I never missed a single class. Working and going to school is doable, it just takes energy.
I am a blended student. I don't attend any lectures, which has it's advantages and disadvantages. Coming into nursing school, I had completed a bachelors in public safety online without any issues, but the depth of knowledge for RN is so much greater, so self-study (even with recorded lectures) took a SIGNIFICANT amount of self discipline and devotion. The advantage is that I only have to attend a lab once per week (sometimes once every other week) and most of my labs are in the evening.
With clinical, I have been so lucky that each course has had a weekend and evening clinical available and I have managed to get into one of those every time so my work schedule is minimally interrupted (some days I need to take an hour of vacation to get to the hospital in time). This semester is going to suck, because we have clinical 2x per week for 9 weeks.. I got saturday/sunday.. So yeah, 9 weeks of zero days off..
As to your comments on the volume of reading, that's just nursing school. Like a lot of the folks in this thread, I was a "top of my class" medic student and always looked at as one of the stronger medics on the department, but I have found nursing school to be overall difficult and requires a significant amount of work. I do think the grind of the last few semesters has improved me though, as this capstone class actually seems to be pretty smooth sailing.
I can't tell you if nursing is right for you or IT or underwater basketweaving.. For me it was originally medical school, but by the time my life was in a place that I could actually do it, I did some soul searching and realized I didn't want that life. Docs work hard, and they work a lot of hours, and I do want to slow down at some point. I went to RN with the plan on going direct to NP so that I could work at the provider level. I did find that I enjoy direct patient care as an RN more than I expected, so I think I may take a few years to work as a nurse (part-time while I finish out my time in the pension system) and then decide.
A final note on scheduling. In 2007 I put myself through the police academy (wanted to be a state fire investigator, it never panned out). That class was M-Th 6p-10p and every Saturday from 8a-5p for 6 months, mandatory in-person attendance. At the time, I was working on company so 24/48. Between vacation time and a small number of trades, I never missed a single class. Working and going to school is doable, it just takes energy.