Study Help! Stressed....

Nursing Students General Students

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This is my first semester in Nursing School and honestly, I feel so lost and were already in week 8. Everything goes by so fast,so many chapters to read and not enough time to do all of them, etc. I feel so overwhelmed and stressed because I'm afraid to fail and have to repeat the semester again. It's just a daily struggle lol.

I just want to know how do you guys balance all of it? Like I don't know how to study, or even what to study. We use the Evolve website and we get assigned chapters to read every week and theres like 4-5 chapters per class. There's just no way I'd be able to read and take notes on ALL of them you know?

Most importantly I'm focusing on my Fundamentals class. My teacher doesn't make any powerpoints, she goes over the readings and she has some highlights which barely help sometimes. I just don't know what to do.

Overall, any study tips? Is there a way I can read ALL the chapters I'm required to read, or even how to get the most out of them?

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First off, take a breath. The transition into nursing school first semester can get overwhelming considering you are diving right in.

Second, determine what kind of a learner you are. Whether it helps for you to study with others, read, diagrams, notes, etc.

Third, use that as your main method to study.

How ever you decide to take notes, consider just reading for understanding and then just flag important or key ideas. For example, if you are learning how to communicate with a patient - only write notes about special acronyms or dos and donts of communication.

If you find that you don't have time to read all of the notes - try reading when you are travelling using audio recordings or photocopies of what you need to read.

I hope this helps.

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Thanks! Ive just managed to read the chapters and highlight some of the stuff I find important. However, I've found that I really need to go more into detail sometimes because the tests tend to be more about critical thinking.

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Yah that is tough. I may be wrong... depends on your professor and the course... but I think the key to answering the critical thinking questions is not necessarily knowing all the little details. It is about having a solid understanding of the key concepts and applying them.

I wish you all the best though.

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NCLEX style practice questions (I have an app that I use that you can trial for free-- I think it's called RN NCLEX Mastery or something like that) and learn to skim read. There are some great videos on YT about how to skim read nursing text books :)

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Yeah lol, I really need to learn to skim read and find other resources that could help me. Thanks!

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I'm about 8 weeks into my first semester. I think I realized about halfway through week 1 that it wasn't going to be feasible for me to read textbooks word-for-word in this program. 3-5 chapters per class per week with 3 classes? Not happening.

I found an awesome video by Nurse Nacole on YouTube. She breaks down how to efficiently skim textbook chapters while still making sure that you are grasping the important information. Definitely check her out!

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Evolve is a good place to start, as well as Quizlet. No way am I reading the 6 chapters per Lecture, and have time to study it. You have to adjust the way you studied in the past, and condense the material into a more manageable, more critical thinking way of looking at it. No powerpoints, fine most are filled with fluff and filler anyhow, but Fundamentals of Nursing Potter Perry is a basic book that a lot of people have created their own powerpoints on each chapter, look for those.

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