Hello everyone,
I was previously enrolled in the RN program at my CC, but failed second semester by 2%. Therefore, I am now debating weather to continue to pursuit nursing, or switch to psychology. My primary goal was to become a Family or Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner, but I barely managed to get average scores in nursing school. I am now thinking of transferring to four-year university and obtaining my bachelors in psychology. I know that graduate school is a must in order to get a decent paying job in such field, but I am ready to work hard in whatever I end up pursuing. However, I have been researching and I find so much negativity and poor job outlooks for psychology majors, while I find endless opportunities in the nursing field. My nursing instructor told me that I can reapply for readmission as long as their is space available, but would most likely have to wait an entire semester to start again. I am stuck in between the two, and would appreciate some advice. Thank you.
So first of all - it’s not true that the job outlook is terrible for psychology majors. The problem is that people often conflate major with career. It IS true that in order to do any kind of professional work in psychology, you need a graduate degree - so if you wanted to do psychotherapy and provide care and counseling, you will need at least a master’s. It is also true that most BA-level jobs within the mental health services field are quite low-paying, and low autonomy too - you would be mostly assisting care providers, perhaps at residential treatment centers or working administration in psychiatric care wards or something.
However, if you just want to major in psychology and perhaps transition to something non-mental health, then the outlook could be better. Many psychology majors go into a lot of other fields like business, market research, management, healthcare administration, etc. You could do anything that most people with a BA could do.
I will say, though, that there are vastly more and better-paying options in nursing. Even if you decided you didn’t want to be a floor nurse anymore after 2-3 years, you could go into hospital administration (and much more easily than a BA in psychology could), into an adjunct field to nursing like telemetry or epidemiology, into consulting for medical firms, into public health nursing, school nursing, etc. Personally, I majored in psychology as an undergrad, and I wish I had majored in nursing instead.
I guess my question is - why do you want to switch? You failed the second semester, but was that because the nursing classes were too difficult for you or because you weren’t focused? Have you completely lost interest, or are you just nervous about your performance going forward?