Get my RN

Sending off the Nursing School applications tomorrow!

I’ve completed the LPN program at a local college and will be taking my State board exam on February 18, 2008. I’ve applied for the RM program, but have not heard if I have been accepted as yet. If so, I will start in August 2008 and graduate in May of 2009.

So I am taking A&P II this semester, yuck! I am so tired of taking classes, I want to be doing the clinical. It would just seem to me that I am actually doing it, if I were. My girlfriend will be starting the nursing program in the Fall, how jealous am I?!

I still need to take the NET (Nurses Entrance Exam) and I just found out that they added another class. Will it ever end??? I still need to get my CNA and I think once I do that it won’t be such a long wait. (Crossing my fingers here) We will see.

Well, I got in! I thought I said I got in here already but it looks like I didnt. Starting jan 28 2008. coolio!
So there are several things I have to do before classes begin. I had to take a dosing exam, which i passed. I need to sign up for CPR. I had a physical. And today I had to get blood drawn that goes along with said physical. Even though I talked myself through it, Since it was 6 vials worth of blood I ended up trying to pass out and then vomiting. Yay.
I had a tragically uncool needle phobia.
I’m going to be a GREAT nurse.

Well, i got one rejection letter and now i’m waiting for two more to come so I can go hide under a rock for the rest of my life.
Seriously these schools put way too much emphasis on the grade you get in a class and nothing on what kind of person you are and what you can handle. I witness nurses with 4.0 gpas be totally unable to grasp the simplest things at my hospital. Because I have a 2.5 GPA (in science, if you add everything else i’m a healthy 3.3), U of MD won’t even look at my application. This is ridiculous, because I am often counseling nurses on medication use because I’ve been working in hospital pharmacy for so long.
It frustrates me to no end that just because people are good test takers they get the nursing school spots,and they haven’t proven themselves any good in the real world and I have.

Well I have been going to school for 2 years part time, but it seems like I will never be done. Even if I wasn’t doing it part time I would still have to wait for an opening to come up at the nursing school.

I just want to get done and start working as a nurse.

im beginning to feel like this may never happen! Curse you, difficult-to-get-into nursing schools!

So nursing schools are very difficult to get into. I thought people were just exaggerating. It’s classic supply and demand: Lots of kids want to go to nursing school; nursing schools are sparse and small.

This is BAD.

a)There is a nursing shortage.

b)there is a nursing school shortage.

This leads to cutthroat competition. One college, Towson U, isn’t even that great a college, but you have to have no less than a 3.0 (which I have; I have a 3.3) and no more than ONE “C”. Come on. I’ve been going to school for give or take seven years. I’ve got at least four C’s in my background and I’m about to “earn” another one. So I’m not even bothering with that school. I think its unfair, really. I’m a smart person, and particularly good with medical information, but because my micro teacher is a dunce, my humanities teacher was a flake, and I farked around in the calc class that I took for no reason in 1998, I can’t be admitted into their program. Some interesting logic there.

Of course, I could write a book on why they SHOULD let me in, but no matter. 50 chicks with a 4.0 will waltz into nursing school without so much as a glance in my direction.

Oh, and if i was to take those classes over? I’d still be penalized. If you’ve retaken more than two courses, you might as well forget it. WTF.

So the problem is I really want my BSN. All I have to do is finish my classes I am in now, take A&P 2 this summer, and an organic chem for allied health professionals in the fall. Then I can get a BSN in a real university. However, because of the high competition, I’m screwed. So I may have to settle for an ADN which makes me a little sad since it both take the exact same amount of time to earn. All I want is to get at least a Bachelor’s, you know?

Here’s the schools I’m applying to so far:
Community college of Baltimore County, Essex
Carroll Community College
Howard Community College
University of Maryland, Baltimore
Notre Dame of Maryland
Coppin State

The super dee duperest part is all the fees. I have two CLEP-passed courses. Each is $20 to be sent to each school. That is $120. Then I need to send my AP english credit to each, and since its archived from 1999, it’s $25 a school so that is $150. Then there are the fees to apply to the schools, which are $35×2, $25×2, $40 and $50. that is $175. So just to APPLY to six schools that will probably all turn me down, it will cost me $445. That is an entire two week paycheck for me.

I won’t send my transcripts until August. That’s when I get my associate’s degree and there supposedly will be less bickering about transferring credits. UM doesnt take ANY applications until august; that is my #1 pick, I really want to go there. All the others I’ve already started the process for… notre dame is a private school so it is wicked expensive… and coppin’s a black college but really who cares, I live in Baltimore for chrissakes it won’t be any different from going to work, seeing a movie or eating at IHOP.

So far, I’m applying to four nursing programs for Spring 08. CCBC, Carroll CC, Johns Hopkins (HAH!) and U of Maryland which I’ve already attended so I’m hoping that will help me in the long run.
The annoying part is I have to not only pay fees to apply, but my AP and CLEP scores are really expensive to mail out, so my average application is costing me $150. That is a lot of money for a rejection letter. I will have to frame them when I get them.
I better go study now; apparently no one gets in under a 3.0 and I’m on the brink in this class I have a test on Weds for. I’m hella depressed about this.

I will be applying to both comm colleges and universities. It would be great to get my BSN but I would really like to not go further into debt and that is where an ADN would work out really nicely. You still get your RN by taking the boards so it wouldn’t matter too too much money wise; no matter which one I get there are ways to jump to a Masters and that is where you really have to spend the money.
I wish education was less expensive but I know it is this way for a reason. If everyone could go to affordable college then i guess that degree wouldn’t mean a whole lot.