[JasonG]

I'm currently active duty Air Force and am interested in eventually becoming a career Officer Flight Nurse after my enlistment is up in 2009.

I have a couple concerns however, my job is pretty relaxed and luckily the Air Force is VERY pro-education, so I could probably get my supervisors to work with me on scheduling. I'd like to know what the workload is like for an RN student? I can do a fair amount of studying at work, but I am concerned about having time for the rest of the commitment. Is this something that can be done? I could probably work night shift and go to class during the day.

Also, my second concern is my college record. I have an Associates in Arts and Sciences, and my GPA is a 3.2, but I've got a total of about 8-10 dropped classes due to family financial issues while I was attending college. Will this hurt my chances of getting into an RN school? Also I have some experience as an EMT-B (about 6 months worth as a resident trainee at a Fire Dept in 2002).

The more I read over this post the more I realize I don't really know much about how to get into this, I'm overseas now, but will be back to the US in April of 06 and will be ready to get things going. Can someone give me any kind of information or advice on what I can do or how I should proceed?

Thanks!
Jason

[cassioo]

Isn't nursing something that the AF will take care of with your schooling since I think there is a need for AF nurses. Are you reuping in 2009 or that's when you're done.

If you have all of your pre-reqs done depending on where you are in school the place I teach does a full day lecture, couple of partial lecture/lab days and a full clinical day. They like to suggest 2 hours study for every hour in class but somepeople don't need that much but others need more

[lam]

cassioo
where do you teach and at what level?

[JasonG]

Well the Air Force does have nurses, and they have programs that will release me from Active Duty early to go to school full-time, but then I lose my paycheck and benefits. So I am going to try to swing it where I can go to nursing school while remaining on Active Duty.

Any other advice you can give me about admissions or anything?

[cassioo]

I teach L&D, Peds (4th semester) at a community college in KY also teach in the preceptor program where the students have to do 120 hours in the 4 weeks prior to graduation 1 on 1 with a preceptor setting their goals etc I just check on them with the preceptor and do a little of the paper grading for assignments they have to turn in before that time ...papers on professional issues, resumes, and such things.

[JasonG]

I currently have an Associates Degree, would it be in my best interest to go ahead an complete a Bachelors Degree before I apply to nursing school? Will this make things easier on me? Or will I be wasting my time and efforts?

[cassioo]

it depends on what your AD is in. You can work on all of the pre-reqs for the nursing until you get into a nursing program. If you finish all of the ones for the AD then work on the ones for the BS then you'll only have nursing classes to do. If you can take just nursing classes and have everything else done it does leave more study, work and family time.