Best organization tools for new students coming in?

[MagnesiuM]

Hello! going to be starting RN program in August, and i'm wondering if you seasoned students could give me some advice for organization of schoolwork:

brilliant flashcard system that worked for you? some amazing mnemonic to learn drug interactions? a binder/filing system that i simply must have? equipment that was indispensable for schoolwork? etc etc etc

it usually takes me about halfway through a semester to figure out "you know, i should have been taking notes this way instead of that way"....and i have a feeling i need to get sorted wwwwaaaaay before then during nursing school.

thanks from the rookie :loveya:

[michigansstudent]

I LOVE this site!! I will be starting NS in August. I am looking for all the help I can get. Orientation was scary and the nurses that I work with now keep telling me how this will be the hardest thing I ever do. That being said, I am happy to get advise from you.

I like to rewrite my notes too. My plan is to record lecture while highlighting in text because I have heard so many times that the lecture goes so fast that if you try to write out what is being said you will miss a lot. I then plan to write out the lecture in note form adding what has been highlighted in the text. I know that seems like a lot but I remember what I write way more than what I read or hear.

My addition to the helpful hints came from my husband. We are keeping our motor home in our drive way plugged into the house and have bought an electric heater. It has all the comforts of home minus the kids, dogs, phone, dirty dishes, laundry, etc. I am so excited about it. It will be my study pod! I will be able to go out there put in an hour or two and leave everything as is with no fear of someone touching it. When things get hairy I can put in an all nighter, nap included. Maybe this will help spark someone else to think outside the box for this busy time we are all about to face. Best of Luck to All!!

[elsabelles]

If I ever get a laptop, I'm considering OneNote. I was wondering though, can you take notes on PowerPoints and somehow associate them with OneNote?

Yes, you can take notes on anything you can print. What you do is select what you want to print (there is even a "clip it" function so you can select absolutely anything on the screen) and instead of going to your printer, it sends it to OneNote. Once there, you can type over it (or if you have a tablet laptop - gateway has them, I love it! - you can draw/write over it). Or, you can type the notes when you are in the power point presentation, and just send the presentation as note pages to OneNote. It keeps everything so well-organized!

[LMRN10]

To keep my dates of things (such as tests, clinicals, due dates for assignments), I had a PDA (Tungsten T3) that I was able to put it into. But a daily planner would do the trick! Something just to write the important dates in. I also have software for my PDA such as Nursing Diagnosis and Drugs...those are a huge help for me!

I put all of the vocabulary on flash cards (usually type them onto a label and then put the label on an index card) and then I bought one of those photo boxes and was able to put them in there and put tabs on each section.

We had modules that we used which were basically just photocopies from the school of our weekly work...but don't get me wrong, it was A LOT! So, I basically had binders that would split them up into the different groups. For our first semester, we had Modules A 1-3, B 1-3, C 1-6 & D 1-2. So, I had one binder for each of those and each week we completed a portion...like A1, then the following week, A2 and so on. I had folders that I labeled as I went along (they were like project folders) and as I came up to a Module, I'd label the folder and only bring that one Module with me to school. You can probably just skip the binders and put them in the folders right away instead (like you said, it took me til about 1/2 way through the semester to figure out my strategy!). This also helped when I had to go back and look at something while studying for our final...everything was right in the folder!

A lot of the study stuff is just repetition...do it over and over and over!!! And read read read!!!

It definitely took a while to figure out my best way of doing things, but you eventually do. Everyone is different. Some brough their entire module (which was INSANE!) and most just brought what we were working on that week. I made sure I was pretty organized before class even started. It seemed very confusing to me in the beginning, but everything falls into place.

I did see that someone else suggested the NCLEX reveiw book...I have heard (for our school anyway) that the questions in there are similar to our tests and it is a good study guide...

Good luck!!! Hopefully this is some help...