I start school Monday.....I'm soo nervous!!

You start in mid march? Thats kinda weird. Good luck.

I would be nervous & very excited too. I am waiting to see if I get in Macomb's program. Just curious, about where did you rank to get a March start? Best of luck!!!!

I'm in the 1600's, here's some tips:
-Study groups are not necessary and likely = gab fests
-Study guides are not necessary
-Read, read, read, read, read, read, read
-Practice your clinical skills in your mind, at home, on the bus etc - and no, putting on sterile gloves shouldn't take more than 10 minutes of your time once :P
-Be nice to your classmates
-For clinical day ( in the hospital) be prepared for nothing to everything...everyone has different experiences.
-Do your assignments early

With reading, the material isn't hard, but there is just ALOT of it.

Have a sense of humor .
Don't take yourself too seriously .
Study with classmates or do your classwork together if it inspires you
Be friendly to everyone, you are stuck with each other for two years .
Thank the people in your life who help you get through it .
Encourage each other when things get hairy
Celebrate with each other when exams go well (as in you got your 78+!):chrs:


You will walk out of class Monday with a sigh of relief when you find out what's expected (besides the insane reading assignments). It's really not that bad!

I'll chime in here too, I'm in the 1800's.

What makes nursing school so hard (for me anyway) is the sheer volume of material being covered, be it in lecture or through the reading assignments, and it's at a rapid pace

I agree that study groups are not for everyone, do what works best for you. I found that I study best with one or two of my classmates, and NOT at the Learning Center. We usually spend a good portion of every weekend doing questions from various sources and quizzing each other from the powerpoints. This work so well for me that I actually can't study on my own anymore, lol, and we all tend to get A's or maybe a B. The trick is to find just one or two people that you like and who think along the same lines as you.

Get the Saunders Comprehensive NCLEX Review! There are tons of questions for nearly every section you'll be covering. Once you get into 1600's and 1700's DEFINITELY get the Med-Surg Study Guide. It's full of great questions and my 1710 instructor actually used the majority of these questions verbatim on at least one of the tests. Doing all of these questions helps you to not only learn the material but also to be able to APPLY what you have learned, and to critically think-out the questions you get on your exams. This is where studying with another person really helps: someone reads the question, and even if neither of you is sure of the answer you are able to rationalize it out together. Hearing someone else's take on what they think the right answer is helps you to see nuances in the question/answer that you may not have caught initially.

As for clinicals, act confident even if you aren't. If a patient asks you something (like "when can I eat?", etc) and you don't know (maybe they're NPO, or on a restricted diet, etc) there nothing wrong with smiling and saying "I'm not sure, but I can find out for you!". Also, there are a lot of noxious oders in the hospital, so if smells bother you try putting on some mint chapstick...you can even swipe a little under your nose when it really bothers you. You really do get used to it eventually.

I hope you find some of these tips to be useful, if I think of any other pearls of wisdom I'll post them. Time for me to dive back into my psych book!