rev:text
| - For my 1000th Yelp review, I thought I'd take the time to write about why I was so inactive on Yelp over the past year. I was a little busying because I attended the ABSN program at Queens 2016-2017. At the time, I'd applied to Duke, UNC and Queens as a 2nd degree student and ended up choosing Queens because of how quick the program was (a bachelors of science in nursing in one year!) I am a motivated person and thought I'd go in and bust it out. I will humbly say that it was the hardest year of my life. My class started with 52 students and only 33 of us graduated. I think I write this review in a more positive light because I have been a working nurse for a month now, I passed the NCLEX on my first try two weeks post-graduation (all of my classmates that have taken boards since graduation have also passed). I felt that Queens prepared me well for entering the field but it did have numerous problems and you MUST be an extremely self-motivated individual that is willing to put your life aside for a year and focus on the degree. I was in class or clinicals Monday-Friday for at least 8 hours/day and post-class and weekends were spent studying. There were people in my class who's relationships or marriages fell apart, diagnosed mental illnesses were discovered while others got engaged or married during the time. My classmates ranged from males (3-graduated) to parents (max of 3 kids) and I was one of 3-4 that graduated without a science undergraduate background.
The first semester of the program was by far the worst for me, there was extremely limited support from professors and although the majority of students ranged from 25-50 years old, we were treated simply like children. Our studying methods were attacked, our responsibility was challenged but there was no guidance to perform better. Our main professors included David Hudson (Gerontology and Fundamentals, 1 star, he was also my adviser unfortunately and a very emotional man, his displays included everything from storming out of class to giving us study guides which ended up being tests), Toy Stone (Pathophysiology and co-taught Fundamentals and Health Assessment, 3 stars), Melissa Santander (co-taught Health Assessment, 5 stars) and JoAndrea Costner (Concepts, 4 stars). We lost 11 students this semester. This was a 19 credit hour semester.
Second semester was extremely difficult as well, but instead of having three incredibly hard classes, we had one to two insanely hard classes and the rest were more manageable. We lost an additional 8 students this semester, mostly because of Amanda Cruz' Med Surg I class, she was by far the most unsupportive teach we had, thinking of her still gives me an unpleasant feelings so I'll leave out additional details. In addition, we had Janie Best (Pharmacology, 4 stars), Dana Mangum [challenging course but a 5-star teacher, she gave us so much more independence as a class and treated us like co-professionals] and Janice McRorie (3 stars, both taught Peds and Maternity), Jolene Correll (Mental Health), Informatics online (Dana Mangum). This was a 20 credit hour semester.
My final semester was by far the best, the professors were supportive and while the classes were still challenging clinicals allowed much more independence. We lost no classmates this semester. It was an 18 hour semester with Vicki Talbot (5 stars, Med Surg II, incredibly supportive teacher that you could tell was passionate about her career and helping us succeed), Teresa Moorman (2 stars, supportive teacher but the class and preparation was not helpful moving towards boards, NCLEX prep-course), Tracy Petleski (3-stars, great teacher just fairly unorganized, Community Health), Betsy Leonard (3-stars, again great teacher and very supportive, the material could have been online and we would have benefitted the same, Leadership and Management) and Sheryl Cornelius (3-stars, good teacher, but material was online-quality, Research).
My clinical teachers were Julie Helton (amazing!!), Paul MacDonald (really great mentor), Oonagh O'Reilly (good), Brittany Dillon (great!) and Dina Khentigan (good). I think Paul and Julie made the biggest impact on my education and the clinical experience was where I truly realized that nursing is the field I was meant for. Overall, if you're considering attending the program, be ready to work hard for an incredible career opportunity. 100% of our class was employed during the third semester. I absolutely love that I went to Queens only because I can look back on the past year and realize that it was all worth it. I am doing what I was meant to do and I wouldn't have gotten here without the school. However, I also know that I absolutely hated the program at times and would have never recommended Queens to anyone. My perspective has changed in retrospect but please feel free to contact me for more details. Hope this review is helpful to those individuals thinking about the program.
|