Busy Work

I am in my third year of a four year BSN program. Nursing school has been tough so far but not impossible. This semester feels as though it is going to be impossible. In addition to our two clinical classes and pharm some of us are taking 1 or 2 humanities. After looking over our nursing syllabi it seems as though our nursing instructors are giving us busy work. For example, reading 30 pages of extra articles, writing annotated bibliography for a paper that we will write a year from now, and seemingly silly writing assignments. It doesn't help that our school adopted plus/minus grading which will kill everyone's GPA (and i don't have a perfect GPA to start with). I think it is in response to the school's NCLEX scores being down the last few years but that doesn't mean they should literally work us to death right? Does anyone else feel like they spend most of their time doing busy work?

Maybe I will end up joining my Psych patients by the end of the semester.