welcome to the secrets of college planning i'm your host anthony uber and today we're going to get into what is nursing and how to go to college for nursing my guest today is sandy esper knows a i'm sorry as for  runs and she's an r n and welcome to the show thank you very much i'm so happy to be here for having no problem so say we're usually start my guess where they went to college so where did you go to college i went to college very close by at the college of new jersey and i graduated in two thousand and eight ok yes great so let's go back in time let's go back into high school where did you start in trade school and when you start thinking about college so in high school i said thinking about college i want to say junior year ok junior year was when you know we had meetings with the guidance counsellors they were advising us supplied ill a couple of different  schools and from there i did i looked into i always knew i wanted to be a nurse so i looked into some schools who offered those nursing programs that i was interested in and i believe i was accepted into the majority of them but my number one however from there and high school i was definitely guided i had some decent guidance from the guidance counselors and i was glad i had some options and that was where my journey started really junior year and from there i just moved forward so now when you're with your parents involved in all the leg work as well or did you do it all yourself i honestly i pretty much did it all myself  parents were actually very strict so we were academic students i was always on the honor roll but i was not i didn't realize the value or they didn't realize the value of being involved in activities so it was like do your schoolwork get good grades come home so i was a very involved and the after school activities any sports so as far as planning those things i had no i didn't have that under my belt but as far as planning  the the searches you know that was all me as well you know how did you start thinking about nursing what was the first thought oh yeah i want to get interesting i think it was just always something that i had a heart for i always had a heart for nursing i just love taking care of people it sounds very cheesy but you know it just makes you feel good and i think that's what we're meant to do taking care of people and i couldn't picture myself doing anything else and the beauty of nursing is that it's very multifaceted there if you don't like want to reno you can go into another i did go on to pursue a certification in loons are some use incontinent so i do specialize in that as well which i absolutely love so it's very it's very diversified you can get into a lot of different aspects and nursing you're not limited to one facet of that so now so how did you end up picking college in new jersey so the college of new jersey actually they had a pretty great program that they offer it it's called the program and it's an equal opportunity funding program and it was very beneficial for me in my circumstance because we had not planned ahead financially i got some some scholarships but not enough to really cover the costs of the other colleges and i wasn't really being offered too much money because i have those academics or sports but i did have the grades so with that program that they offered i was able to you know get help from them and paying for books and some courses and that really relieve the burden so that aspect of the college of new jersey was definitely the number one draw but also their nursing program is phenomenal it was a challenge but it made me better i absolutely appreciated that in the nursing program  and that you know a program we had to do a summer program where i was able to get to know other students and one of them being my roommate for the next three years work so that was very very interesting very very interesting experience and i'm grateful for it very grateful so you know you get to koji jersey your freshman what do you start taking what are the what are the classes that you start taking is it a general class for the first couple years and then you start getting into the nursing yes yes the first year and a half or two they were like elective courses general left of course says where each were interesting they were very interesting they wanted us to be well rounded as they say so majors and that was very interesting too so i did i did appreciate that in the long run at first you're like oh my god i don't have to take all these elective courses what does that have to do with what i want to do but in the long run it did pay off because i got to meet so many different people learn about so many different cultures and other major so it was mentioned that are special now the last two years were kind of classes are you taking for nursing and is it more of a pre med type of thing or is it really focused on  i don't you know i wouldn't say it was pre med it is more nursing focused and driven we like courses like anatomy and physiology and which was my favorite we did have to take some chemistry courses but our pharmacology courses they are more specific to nursing because they're not as end up as you know may be a pre med student would take or maybe a nurse practitioner and a master's program would take but it does set the stage in the foundation for us to move forward for what we needed to know right the other classes yet they were very specific and nursing driven and then those last two year and a half we were in clinical which is the fun part there you have the instructors here you're in the hospital you're nervous as ever you know you're finally actually touching a patient doing care so but it was a phenomenal phenomenal experience  is it is it something where do you and rightly college earns or is it something it continues after college or if you're constantly learning about nursing you you have many options you have many many options and i personally do plan to continue to go for my masters at some point to be able to you know expand on my knowledge and be able to have more options i have a lot of friends who are going to practitioners that have went on to get their ph d and they have so many options or tell me about all these experiences but it doesn't have to end there you can go into like i was saying before so many different facets of nursing i would love to specifically focus on the wound care as a practitioner and be able to prescribe things or you know make more recommendations and be more detailed in that aspect and be able to teach more because i love teaching but  you have so many different options with nursing can you name some of the learning is it something where students just say oh i want to go to nursing that's it or two you name a few where you know some people might be able to go into yet for  example when you're going to get your masters you have the option to do nursing administration or you can become a family nurse practitioner you can be a nurse practitioner in the hospital which we work with a lot on my floor actually you can work in a doctor's offices alongside a doctor you can open up you have the option to think about business and open up a business if you wanted to yes  thing do you start to focus on that in college those are some of the things that you start to focus on in college or is it something where it's just general the whole way you can that there are many people who do have that focus in college i honestly when i first went i was very focused on just getting my bachelor's and being done with it because at the time you're just so stressing your life school never again but as you get into nursing you're working more and more you realize how how much knowledge you do have and how much you want to expand on it so i'm thinking about it now but i did have many peers who thought about it that because they knew exactly what they wanted to do flee the fact that they wanted to become a nurse practitioner for get their ph team one said ministration just so yeah absolutely if you know right away the better the more you know aesthetically what you want to do the better the sooner the better i would say so so now once you graduate from college with weird agenda i am currently working at the university of pennsylvania penn presbyterian hospital ok and they are an a the the whole university of pennsylvania and very well known for cardiac we actually just become a trauma center so that's definitely boosted up the admission rates which is great you know and  learning a lot of things and i'm currently working on a cardio thoracic floor which is awesome and they're also letting me provide education to the floor in the arena of women care so they let me have that liberty to plan things and help out in that aspect of skin care so now do you when you're in college is there extra activities that you do when you got to college which you didn't do much in high school right or something that you were active in the  college community when i was in college i got active and there was the gospel choir which i enjoyed there was i was honestly a quiet  i didn't i honestly did not get involved as much as i could have or probably should have this is something that kids want to do or is it something where you know you was just focused on just going to school and coming home by kind of stuff where you where you are right campus or off campus i was on campus and i was personally when i first got there yeah i was very ill just let me go to class get my work done and because that kind of carried along from high school you know i know they say a lot of sheltered kids kind of go crazy because i was opposite i completely led a straight path so it was a very focused academics for me and nationally and but many of the many of my peers they did get involved in a lot of activities and and got very involved in the campus and i could see it benefits they got to know they got to know other people they got to network they had really great experiences and you know i would get involved every once in a while but you are very very focused and there are lot of tests so initially those programs we were in the classrooms and we would have a test maybe like every two weeks it seemed like where every couple of weeks and they were very very involved very very and and we would have a process clinical where we were in the lab at the school ok and our instructor would we would run through scenarios we'd have partners and run through scenarios or be in groups and they would say ok this is happening with your patient what do you do like you would be the lead nurse or leading the code or the rapid response so what do we do how do you put in a fully and we would practice that in the lab and then from there we would go into hospital settings we would have a patient and we would be expected to do that care and we had a professor our instructor watching over us going in with us doing on the skills checking us off giving us feedback and we could improve from there so if we didn't improve from there then there were fewer probably have to take the class over or you know you probably bombs out of the program especially the test the test could make your break you they were very strict with their standards which you know i think they should be there would be what's the standard at the school you have to maintain i believe it was a big minus at the time and there their numbers were a little well different their standards were higher so a b minus was between was within a certain range so it got very hard at some times because there it was very in depth very involved do they give you a lot of internships where they'd send you to a certain schools and things like that did you do that throughout the years as well yes yes that was part of the clinical so maybe not necessary internships but that was part of the clinical is where we would do rotations we do maternity leave to med s psych so we got to experience those different arenas and in that time you got to see well i really kind of like this so but it does but i thought i might like that and the community surprised me i'm not in community setting but it surprised me and i did enjoy that a lot more than i thought i would but you get to discover different facets of nursing that you thought you might not have liked but that you eventually were one at the time that did you see a lot gentlemen who graduated from our class and yeah where we're definitely still an overwhelming number of women in the field yeah yeah and once you graduate from school do you have a pick of where you want to go is it you know can you go over the country how does it as a pretty much work yeah that's another great thing about it because nurses are needed everywhere we had a lot of nurses who you know were getting married or who wanted to move and they were able to apply to different hospitals throughout the country and get the positions that they wanted but also even now they have trouble in are saying where they put you in thirteen week assignments in different hospitals throughout the country and they give you those options of where you want to go sometimes and we just had i just had one of my coworkers who i love dearly just moved and she was able to get a position in north carolina from pennsylvania it's in north carolina very easily so is the john market pretty good where you know once you graduate you're almost guaranteed a job or is it like a lot of the other segments of america where it's not as easy as  get a job interestingly enough it became very hard after i got my job that year right after it became very hard for nurses to get a job for some reason it was two thousand and eight during the recession but many nurses struggle during that time however i believe it's gotten better and has time better we have become more in demand and it's slowly going back to the place that was i believe because we  nursing was always in demand there was never like a like a freeze there were hospitals who had freezes but it has become more open more new nurses are getting hired and it's become a little easier to get a job as a nurse so in high school let's go back there where when you start thinking about nursing in college and things are there any kind of the dance that go on at the high school where you can go check out some of this stuff every day when i think about it i believe we did have like career fairs we did have career fairs and college fairs that happen where we were able to connect with different recruiters and network a little bit some high schools do offer that yeah i did you find out how to i said as it was helpful i was able to connect with people in the recruiters and see what their schools have to offer and see what type of leadership there was that's very important i believe anywhere you're going whether a job or or school thing that the leadership that they have  seeing their track record being able to get a good vibe for the people who are going to be you know the turning your future now is nursing something where you have to go to college or is it is there secondary school that they can go to or is it you can you go straight out of high school right into nursing is there in no never straight out of high school you are able like if you wanted to be like a certified nursing assistant even that you have to do so some things like that however as a nurse even when you're functioning as an lpn you do need some schooling like a diploma degree or something like that i'm not too familiar with alfie and program but if you want to be a bachelor's prepared nurse you need at least four years of schooling and more and more hospitals almost all the hospitals now will be requiring a bachelor's prepared nurse and how do you get to become an r you you've got to do your research if if that's what you want you have to do your research and see which programs offer the r n bashing prepared programs that you're seeking you don't want to waste your time i always recommend to people who say oh i'm going to go i'm going to do opt in and i say go straight for your bachelors because it's going to be very hard for you to get a job as an lpn now so once you get your bachelor's is there register you as an r and as a registered nurse and it was probably the hardest test of my life so is it long is it like in a city where it's three four hours it is in work it depends on the person i had people who said they got it don hour i had people who said they got it done in the whole i think were given six or seven hours in total and some people took up the whole time i think i did it in about two and a half hours but it's between seventy five to two hundred questions ok don't quote me on that but that's about how many questions there are and as you're taking the test you know here you kind of get a feel for a few doing ok or not because the more questions that you may or may not get that you don't get right you'll still it'll still prompt you to keep taking questions keep taking questions really yes so you know you're kind of like ok i gotta step of my game here i got to get these quite more questions right but the more questions you get right the less questions it'll prompt you to take really yes so it's all about is it an online based how does online one here where you go to a facility a center that's close by you you register and you take the test and  i was the one who i did the minimum that had to that you had to do but it took me about two hours to do it because i was reading each and every single word over and over again yeah cause you just don't want to have to think that over but how many times can you take well the first time but in that after the first time ok so so now picking all those schools are really comes down to financially what you're saying picking out the schools because  finance really meant the why to pick a school is there are a majority of schools out there that have nursing programs or is it just pretty much like schools like college in new jersey smaller schools are they big time schools  that you know of as well oh yeah they have a lot of schools out there temple has a good program i heard villanova has a great nursing program they have a lot of colleges out there that incorporate a nursing program so the options  there the options are there they're there for not low on any nursing programs i can tell you that so there's a lot of research that gets involved yeah you visit a lot of the schools that you visit some of the schools that you point to i did visit the college of new jersey ok when they had that opportunity i did i didn't you know yes i actually did visit maybe one or two others and the college of new jersey was the one that stuck in my mind it made the most sense it was it was far enough where i could still campus but it wasn't too close where eventually passing that test right so going into the workplace how difficult is it to find a particular area that you want to get into it's difficult if you don't know what you want to do but if you know you immediately want to go into an i c u you just start researching i c u physicians and they're usually out there or a lot of new nurses it's probably a little for some then it's a little easier for them to get into the programs that they offer they're called gateway programs and so they want the new nurses and i believe it's more so because they're new and they can mold them into exactly what they want for their floor so a lot of the times they take a lot of new nurses sometimes overseas and nurses because you know they haven't been contaminated just kidding but yeah there are a lot of options if you know what you want then kids i would tell other parents i know there are probably a lot of strict parents out there too but they really if they really want their children to get more funding they really need to have them get involved in other sports the arts something that they can have under their belt to have them be more than just an academic student to be more rounded to the college because that's what they love for and to the students to start their research early as well know decide what it is that you want to do earlier the earlier the better so you can start doing your research you can start connecting in networking with people who will put you in the right direction because that's very important it becomes very hard and sometimes students are in college you know picking up a major that they really don't want to do and then they end up going for another major but if you know what you want to do earlier on will save you a lot of time energy and money so and parents also findings start start some sort of fund for your child as early as possible because i am sitting on student loans are right now that i'm still paying off which i'm not complaining you know it's it is what it is but had i known then what i know now things would have been differently financially so if they would start planning very early on as far as the