Nursing School + Work= NOT working for me!

[mkayf]

I have good grades for my nursing classes right now, I really do! But they are NOT the grades I want or expect from myself. I work at the college and my boss trusts me more than anyone else we work with so I get to do the work. She says the other are not capable of the amount of work I do. So while I work... those butt holes are do all of their homework, and study! I AM A NURSING STUDENT! I have wayyyy more homework than any of them! And I have wayyyy more classes! I have 7 classes this semester! Most of them only have 3 or 4! I dunno this is kind of a vent and I dunno what else!
I love nursing school, but with everything else going on right now I just don't know how well this is going to work out for me...

[silverrein]

I feel your pain. I'm not in nursing, however, I'm juggling a 16 hour per week practicum and 4 graduate classes. I'm a health psychology grad student, so I feel ya on the heavy load. Hundreds of pages to read per week (not to mention memorize diagnostic criteria, etc,).

[mkayf]

Originally Posted by silverrein I feel your pain. I'm not in nursing, however, I'm juggling a 16 hour per week practicum and 4 graduate classes. I'm a health psychology grad student, so I feel ya on the heavy load. Hundreds of pages to read per week (not to mention memorize diagnostic criteria, etc,).

I know! It is awful! And grad classes? I am soooo sorry! lol
They expect us to know sooo much for just one class but forget that we have... oh I dont know.... like a bunch others! Prof's annoy me!

[csmithwick_819]

Can you not ask your boss for less hours? If your school is going to suffer because of your workload I say you need to talk to your boss ASAP!!!

[Chelsea.]

If you are taking that many classes a semester, should you finish early? That would be the good thing about it! Don't stress yourself out too much though. If it's too much, you might want to drop a few things.

[silverrein]

They definitely expect us to know every detail in the book at this point. I honestly just have those days where I want chuck my books out the window (if only they didn't COST so much! lol!)

I agree with the other girls. See if you can prioritize. If you can afford to work a few less hours per week, see if that is feasable. You can only spread yourself so thin hon.

[mkayf]

Originally Posted by csmithwick_819 Can you not ask your boss for less hours? If your school is going to suffer because of your workload I say you need to talk to your boss ASAP!!!

Nope, I have a set amount of hours to get done. And at the moment DH is unemployed so it is probably best I keep my hours....

Originally Posted by Chelsea. If you are taking that many classes a semester, should you finish early? That would be the good thing about it! Don't stress yourself out too much though. If it's too much, you might want to drop a few things.

Its only supposed to be for this semester, and yes I guess I will be finishing early... I am a freshmen, and I will be done in 4 more semesters....

Another thing, the nursing profs are not very supportive. They keep telling us that if we can't handle it we may need to rethink our careers. First of all when we graduate we won't be expected to know everything that we have covered in class... We will be able to ask questions and use references to back up any kind of doubts or unsure situations.

[MsBrianna]

Originally Posted by csmithwick_819 Can you not ask your boss for less hours? If your school is going to suffer because of your workload I say you need to talk to your boss ASAP!!!

[Epona]

I totally feel you on this one.

I have two 12 hour clinicals a week (plus the prep for them and the hours of paperwork/careplans afterward) plus full time classes. After DF's deployment starts I'm going to grab a small job so I can pay for sending out the carepackages and such. I feel like the other majors complain when they don't get a day off during the M-F workweek. I can't remember the last time I had a day off from classes I always feel extremely jealous of some other majors.

And I do feel like the expectations of what nurses should know when getting out of school is a little crazy. Because I feel like we get bombarded with EVERY area of medicine and it's all crammed into 4 years. I think it is part of why so many of my friends in their first year of nursing feel like it's worse than nursing school; they've all told me they end up learning more from experience just because there is simply not enough time to get it in school.

I don't know how much this will help or not help, but for my first couple years of nursing school I was the Anatomy tutor at school. This was the best job I ever had. It was hard, but it forced me to know my stuff REALLY well, it paid as much as some other part-time job, and it has helped me enormously in every single nursing class. (From stuff about meds to etiology of diseases) Also, on nights when no students showed up for tutoring I got to do my own work.
I don't know if you have started clinicals or not yet, but I find that in clinicals where they only give me one patient, there are times I don't need to be bedside (like when they're eating, family is visiting, etc) so I start my careplans then.

[*Kate*]

I remember when I was still in nursing school they told us that the drop out rate for the ones that tried to hold down a job while handling a full course load was about 85% and regular drop out rate was 50% just because of the intensity of the program. Our class started out with 240 people and graduated (without me ) with 72. It was a BSN program though. It is a lot of work and if you don't think you can handle both, don't try! Lighten your hours with work if you can.