... but my grade are pretty much finalized now. So I thought I'd share. I'm changing some of the names of the classes just to be a little less searchable.
How to give someone a physical, nurse style (2 Credits) A (~98%)
All the basics of Nursing and The basics of being a nurse on a psych floor (5 Credits) : A (98.3%)
An overview of nursing issues (2 Credits): A (~98%)
Drug, drugs, and more drugs (3 Credits): A- (91.6%)
How diseases work (4 Credits): A- (~92.4%)
Actually working in a hospital and in mental ward: (5 Credits) A (~97%)
That should make my GPA a 3.9
Here's the thing. I don't find it all that difficult from an intellectual standpoint. It keeps me busy, especially the parts where I have to write papers, but I don;t struggle to "understand" the content. To tell the truth, so far it's mostly been common sense.
I am pleased with my performance, but to a certain extent I feel like I'm just performing at the level that I expected. I can live with a B if its a nice high B, but in truth I expect to get A's. So getting an A doesn't feel like an achievement. It's more like a milestone to me.
I suppose that's both good and bad. Good in the sense that I hold myself to a relatively high standard, bad in that there is little joy in what amounts to very good performance. I'm also concerned that I'll expect The Peanut to always bring home A's. And that would be unfair, especially considering my high school GPA was something like a 2.5 The only C's I ever got in college were Accounting I and II. I can understand Chemistry and Physics and Statistics without a problem, but accounting remains a mystery.
At any rate, it's something that I intend to look out for. I tell her now that she's my favorite Peanut because she is so smart, so nice and so cute. I want to keep reinforcing that (hopefully in more sophisticated ways) as she gets older. I want a kid who is smart, confident and tough. But I digress.
The real upside of the GPA is that if I can keep it up I'll get into graduate school pretty easily, if that's really what I want. I got into this program with the idea that Ic ould always return to sales, but I don't know if I really want to do that. Even though you can make a heck of a good living, it's always uncertain.
But the more I go to school the more I wonder if just staying in patient care is the better choice. I think I could move into management pretty easily, just because I have a business background and I'm male. The faculty has told us to expect to move into management just on the basis of our having dual degrees. We're sort of expected to be leaders.
If I don't choose administration, I could do grad school and become a nurse practitioner. There seems to be a trend now that nurse practitioners are being replaced by DNPs. or Doctors of Nursing Practice. A DNP is actually a year shorter than doing a masters followed by nurse practitioner school. In the end the duties are the same, but you call one of them Doctor (I'm not sure how I feel about that).
The thing about doing a DNP is the income. It's a three year, part-time program that is mostly online. You can work and go to school simultaneously. Because it's a practical degree there is no research or thesis requirement. After you graduate, bang, you've pretty much guaranteed yourself an upper middle class income for life. I like the idea of not having to sweat to put The Peanut through college.
Then Mona also wants to go back to school and get a psychology masters. She wants to do early intervention type stuff with autistic kids. So add in an income like that and we'll be OK to retire someday. She's taking an online intro to psych class now and like likes what she's learned so far.
The DNP also might be cool for retirement. Mona wants to re-up with the Peace Corps when we pack it in. Part of me thinks that might be cool. With a DNP I think I could pick my post and pretty much be sure that I wouldn't be digging wells and evading guerrillas in some scary jungle somewhere.
Some people with my GPA in nursing want nurse anesthesia, but I don't think that's for me. It's another two years of full time school, and I don't know if we can really afford that. Plus, in my opinion, the OR is boring and being a nurse anesthetist looks like lots of boredom with the occasional moments of panic and a high risk for malpractice suits. That's just my opinion. If you want to be a nurse anesthetist please don't let me stop you. The people who do it seem to love it, and the money is fantastic.
At any rate, you're now up to speed.
So what do you think? Do I go back to sales and keep nursing as a fallback? Do I try for management and administration? How about Grad school and a doctorate?
If you've read this far it's my great hope that you'll share your opinion. I really appreciate hearing everyone's thoughts.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
My Brain Is So Big That My Neck Can Barely Hold My Head Up
I am a genius.
Here’s why.
Today was my last day of school for five weeks. All my finals are taken, papers written and evaluations performed.
This semester I (and the rest of my class) carried 21 credit hours. The first two weeks were devoted to a single two credit course that was basically preparatory. After that we had ten weeks and 19 credit hours. 5 of those credit hours were for time spent in the hospital working with patients. The other 14 credit hours were didactic classes.
In the first clinical rotation we did two eight hour shifts per week on a medical floor at an area hospital. We worked with a patient or two and did basic stuff that I’ve already written about. My clinical instructor thought I was the cat’s PJ’s. My evaluation was really good from her and she told me that I should spend a little time doing patient care before I moved on to bigger and better. The implication was that I would most certainly be moving on to bigger and better. My written and clinical grade was 3.989 out of 4.0.
My classmates knew the instructor liked me, but since she didn’t dislike any of them there weren’t any issues with favoritism or jealousy. The instructor told us as a group that we were pretty strong, and I think the lowest grade anyone got was a 3.5.
I figured my grade was due at least a little to the fact that I was well liked, so I figured that the next rotation would sort of round things out.
Tonight I finished my psych rotation (again, two eight hour shifts per week) and got another evaluation from a different clinical instructor. She told me I got the top grade in our class, 3.875 out of 4.0. She marked me down in one category, but only because she felt that no one at this level of education or experience could possibly get a perfect score in that category. But she felt that I was very strong and plans to ask the program chair to round my grade up a little. Ultimately it won’t matter, but it’s nice to hear.
The thing that really gets me is that this instructor hasn’t shown any hints of liking anyone more than anyone else. She also says that we are a very strong group in general. My written work seems to be a little better than most because, in her opinion, I listened to her requirements and instructions and delivered what she asked for. This was not the case with some of my classmates, although they did well enough.
So that’s twice now that I’m on the top of the pile. So maybe the hype is true after all.
Here’s what I think my final grades will be:
Clinicals: A
Clinical lecture: A
Assessment: A
Intro to Nursing: A
Pathophysiology: A-
Pharmacology Low A- or High B+
85% of the Pharm grade is in, and my score is 90.7%. 91% is an A-. The final 15% is participation. I never missed a class, so hopefully that will get me that last .3%
The real upside of this is really about whether or not I want to do graduate or doctoral work. For example, if I wanted to be a nurse anesthetist (and I don’t really), I would probably need a 3.8 GPA to get into most programs.
Other programs, like Masters of Nursing or Advanced Practice Nursing probably want 3.5 or better. They also take into account whether you went into an accelerated program like the one I'm in. Apparently high grades in an accelerated program look pretty good to admissions people. They figure if you can hack it here you can deal with graduate or post graduate work.
It looks like the Nurse Practitioner degree is going to go away over the next few years. There seems to be a trend to replace it with a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree. It’s really similar but from what I understand also adds in some more about the business side of running a practice.
Someone also recently told me that the degree is done quite heavily on line, since it’s really about theory mostly. People are able to work while they’re in class. And since it’s about nursing practice there’s no thesis or research needed to have the degree awarded.
The upside socially is for these DNP’s to take up some of the slack for physicians. And it looks like we’re headed for a shortage of them too. The personal upside is Nurse Practitioners and DNPs have low six figure incomes. That’s highly appealing.
The downside is that it’s confusing for patients. “You’re Doctor Nurse?” It also upsets physicians, who see DNPs as competition for patients. I understand that, and in their shoes I might be concerned too.
As far as the title goes, I think if I did it I’d only let people call me Doctor once per day. After that it’s Jorge. Or maybe Doc.
In the short term I need to find a job and pay off student loans for tuition at a private college. Hopefully I can find an employer who has a tuition forgiveness program (that's becoming more common in some places where nurses are in demand).
But I digress. The point is that my grades are excellent. More than one critical source has now rated me Awesome. External validation rocks.
I am a genius.
Here’s why.
Today was my last day of school for five weeks. All my finals are taken, papers written and evaluations performed.
This semester I (and the rest of my class) carried 21 credit hours. The first two weeks were devoted to a single two credit course that was basically preparatory. After that we had ten weeks and 19 credit hours. 5 of those credit hours were for time spent in the hospital working with patients. The other 14 credit hours were didactic classes.
In the first clinical rotation we did two eight hour shifts per week on a medical floor at an area hospital. We worked with a patient or two and did basic stuff that I’ve already written about. My clinical instructor thought I was the cat’s PJ’s. My evaluation was really good from her and she told me that I should spend a little time doing patient care before I moved on to bigger and better. The implication was that I would most certainly be moving on to bigger and better. My written and clinical grade was 3.989 out of 4.0.
My classmates knew the instructor liked me, but since she didn’t dislike any of them there weren’t any issues with favoritism or jealousy. The instructor told us as a group that we were pretty strong, and I think the lowest grade anyone got was a 3.5.
I figured my grade was due at least a little to the fact that I was well liked, so I figured that the next rotation would sort of round things out.
Tonight I finished my psych rotation (again, two eight hour shifts per week) and got another evaluation from a different clinical instructor. She told me I got the top grade in our class, 3.875 out of 4.0. She marked me down in one category, but only because she felt that no one at this level of education or experience could possibly get a perfect score in that category. But she felt that I was very strong and plans to ask the program chair to round my grade up a little. Ultimately it won’t matter, but it’s nice to hear.
The thing that really gets me is that this instructor hasn’t shown any hints of liking anyone more than anyone else. She also says that we are a very strong group in general. My written work seems to be a little better than most because, in her opinion, I listened to her requirements and instructions and delivered what she asked for. This was not the case with some of my classmates, although they did well enough.
So that’s twice now that I’m on the top of the pile. So maybe the hype is true after all.
Here’s what I think my final grades will be:
Clinicals: A
Clinical lecture: A
Assessment: A
Intro to Nursing: A
Pathophysiology: A-
Pharmacology Low A- or High B+
85% of the Pharm grade is in, and my score is 90.7%. 91% is an A-. The final 15% is participation. I never missed a class, so hopefully that will get me that last .3%
The real upside of this is really about whether or not I want to do graduate or doctoral work. For example, if I wanted to be a nurse anesthetist (and I don’t really), I would probably need a 3.8 GPA to get into most programs.
Other programs, like Masters of Nursing or Advanced Practice Nursing probably want 3.5 or better. They also take into account whether you went into an accelerated program like the one I'm in. Apparently high grades in an accelerated program look pretty good to admissions people. They figure if you can hack it here you can deal with graduate or post graduate work.
It looks like the Nurse Practitioner degree is going to go away over the next few years. There seems to be a trend to replace it with a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree. It’s really similar but from what I understand also adds in some more about the business side of running a practice.
Someone also recently told me that the degree is done quite heavily on line, since it’s really about theory mostly. People are able to work while they’re in class. And since it’s about nursing practice there’s no thesis or research needed to have the degree awarded.
The upside socially is for these DNP’s to take up some of the slack for physicians. And it looks like we’re headed for a shortage of them too. The personal upside is Nurse Practitioners and DNPs have low six figure incomes. That’s highly appealing.
The downside is that it’s confusing for patients. “You’re Doctor Nurse?” It also upsets physicians, who see DNPs as competition for patients. I understand that, and in their shoes I might be concerned too.
As far as the title goes, I think if I did it I’d only let people call me Doctor once per day. After that it’s Jorge. Or maybe Doc.
In the short term I need to find a job and pay off student loans for tuition at a private college. Hopefully I can find an employer who has a tuition forgiveness program (that's becoming more common in some places where nurses are in demand).
But I digress. The point is that my grades are excellent. More than one critical source has now rated me Awesome. External validation rocks.
I am a genius.
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