Nursing School advice?

I am an RN and my son is currently in nursing school. I got my degree by challenging the nursing program at USONY now called Regents College in NY. I started out by going to a Licensed Vocation Nurse program at a junior college. That was an easy program but LVNs or LPNs do twice the labor for half the pay of an RN. But when I was hired, the hospital paid me more because I had experience in a specialty area and gave me a name tag that didn't specify what my title was. After several years, I decided that I want to get paid for the RN job I was holding, but didn't have the money to quit my job and go to school full time so I decided to challenge the program. Finally, I had to challenge the NLN test to get my license, and scored in the upper 3% of the nation. From grade school, I knew I wanted to be one of two things, either an exotic animal vet or an RN. And I think that has a lot to do with how difficult nursing school will be. If you want to go to nursing school to make money or for job security, then you end up being one of those nurses that aren't very engaged in their jobs. You do your 8 hours and go home. And school will be tedious because you just want to get through and start drawing a check. But if you are motivated by the desire to have a job that truly helps someone and the satisfaction of knowing that because you are alert and well-trained that you personally save several lives every year. You will love school it gives you the training but there's more when you get out of school. You will learn to gain a patient's confidence within minutes. You will learn to talk about death, hope and heaven with a terminal patient. You will be comfortable with praying with a patient that is facing surgery or is just afraid. And you will be amazed at how much your smile and your touch means to your patients. I'm amazed at how quickly my son has learned these things. But he used to do his homework in the nurses break room at the county hospital when he was in high school. He loves nursing school; is in the honor society and is working nights as an orderly now. You will love it too, it's the best job in the world.

It is very HOT, and difficult to get in Nurse in California. All colleges are 4 to 10: 1, so some schools do lottery, some schools do waiting list around 3 to 5 years. Nurse is very hot, many first year graduates get $80K/ year ,average $120,000 in CA. But be aware, many hositals will cut nurse salary in next a few year, because so many lost jobs, no job means no insurance, they will not either seeking medical care or without paying bill, who can afford $14,000/year medical insurance for a family of 4. And so many nurse graduates plus huge Filipino and Indian Nurses get licenses in US, If you don't do it in $25/hr, many are waiting up for the position