The best place to go to meet the people who are going to be mayors, county council members, state senators, and governors? LAW SCHOOL. The halls are crawling with politicians’ kids. If you’re not going to use the degree, then it wouldn’t be worth paying all that tuition, but find a reason to attend free events that a law school near you offers, and use the opportunity wander the halls yourself – you’ll see what I mean.

Great advice by the way. Especially the first bit where you counsel her to check out the career before hand: I’ve seen it happen before where someone goes back to school and the job is not at all what they were expecting!

I’m happy Amanda decided to return to school however; earning a degree or professional certification is one of the best ways to make more money in the long term. And it’s not all about being a doctor or a lawyer anymore; many places are desperate for professionals like nurses simply because no one is considering these jobs anymore (especially in Canada!. I go into detail about this in my article “How Can I Make More Money?” which can be found here: http://www.btgnow.net/2008/07/how-can-i-make-more-money-part-2-work-smarter/

Good luck Amanda!

Stay away from LVN/LPN programs. While they often turn out quality nurses, the license is so limited now it severely restricts where you can go with your career.

However, if you think it might be for you, I have a few things to mention:
1) Colleges will give you “basic skills” tests – to test your reading comprehension, writing skill, and math ability. If it has been a while, you can brush up on these things. Many people walk in, unaware that they are going to get tested, and agree to take the tests without preparing. Don’t do that! You could end up wasting a semester on remedial classes.

2) If you have a major in mind, get in to a class in that major, but take some general education courses too. If you discover, for example, political science isn’t for you, you can always discover during that same semester that you really like writing, or computers, or sociology. Or whiskey, but that’s a different aspect of education!

3) Introduce yourself to a faculty member in the major. Badger them. Full time faculty have office hours during the week, and you don’t have to be one of their students to visit and ask questions. Many faculty actually hope for this – the more students in their major, the more options they have in course selection, so it is in their best interests to talk to you a bit.

4) If you’re starting at a community college – remember, once you get the associate’s degree, no one can ever take that away from you. You’ll have a degree, and you’ll be in the upper 33% of the US already. If you go to a four year school, and you don’t finish, you don’t have any degree, but one advantage (aside from cost) is that an associate’s degree at a community college gives you a middle point. Ask about transfer agreements, remember, they are competing for your business, and they better give you a seamless way to transfer to local four year colleges and universities!

One other thing I would say is that sometimes you just have to make the leap. When you know it’s what you want to do, go for it. I freaked myself out before I went back trying to get everything sorted out. Paying off debts, saving some money, etc. Being prepared is one thing, but sometimes you just have to jump.

One of the more interesting analysis for me was figuring out whether I should go full-time or part-time. I chose the full and don’t regret it.

Definitely look into a hospital job prior to attending nursing school. Most have very generous tuition reimbursement programs. You’ll learn medical terminology, how the hierarchy operates, and you’ll learn very quickly if health care is really for you. It’s nice to think that you’ll be able to make a difference in someone’s life, and you can, but the reality of time and budget constraints seriously get in the way sometimes. Health care is still a business, and there will be no shortage of bean-counters to remind you of that if you aren’t pulling the wagon. On the flip side, it’s full of wonderful, caring people with warm hearts and hilariously wacky personalities.

That said, it’s been a great career for me, and I would welcome you into the fold. Best of luck to you.

rjk, rn

If you want to work the US, though, you should be aware that Canadian nursing school will not be a good preparation for the NCLEX. The NCLEX (and the American nursing schools are much more focused on factual stuff – physiology, pathology, pharmacology, microbiology etc. – than Canadian schools or our licencing exam. For some reason, the Canadian programs prefer to focus on airy-fairy “theory” bullshit. I didn’t enjoy nursing school one bit, nor do I feel that it even remotely prepared me to work as a nurse, but getting that degree allowed me to become an RN and to improve my personal situation greatly, so it was worth it overall.

I agree with Gayle’s suggestion to talk to nurses about the job as much as you can before starting school. If you can’t find many, here are a couple options:

1. The discussion boards at http://www.allnurses.com

2. The book “Tending Lives” edited by Echo Heron. It’s a compilation of many nurses descriptions of their work, and is very interesting. Some of the stories are humourous or inspiring, but some are so horrible that they’ll destroy any romantic or sentimental notions of nursing that you might be harbouring (not that I’m saying that you personally have these notions, but lots of non-nurses do).

Good luck, Marion RN

Trent, you are your own best example of how you can get into a desired field without going for an appropriate degree (unless it’s required, as for medicine or law or nursing).

An amazing number of people want to be writers and think the only way to go is to enroll in an MFA writing program, which takes two or three years and usually costs thousands. Then — ta-da — they will be certified writers.

But you have become a real writer without first jumping the expensive hurdle of the MFA. You just went ahead and did it. And here you are. It didn’t take an advanced degree to get you here.

Secondly, I was fortunate enough to get a job as a typist at the school I wanted to attend, so my classes were free. My bosses were flexible and let me work my hours around my classes (which technically wasn’t allowed, but I was a good worker and a good student). Because I already had a degree, it would have been impossible for me to get financial aid, so the free tuition was a godsend.

Finally, you might look into attending a school with a co-op program. Ideally, you would have a semester of classes followed by a semester of paid work in your intended field. This helps you pay for your schooling and also gives a taste of what the real world will be like once you graduate.