How is nursing school?

[RN to be soon]

I am almost done with A&P 2. I will probably get a high B and I am beginning nursing school next semester. How hard would is nursing school? So many people in nursing course have warned and scared me that A&P is nothing like nursing school and it's going to be multiple times harder. I am not sure if they're just being arrogant because they did the same thing to me when I was in A&P 1, they warned me about how harder A&P 2 is going to be but it wasn't that difficult.

[cracklingkraken, ASN, RN]

It's different, but I think that it varies for each individual. I find that, once you understand the question formatting, it's much easier.

[windsurfer8, BSN, RN]

What difference does it make if it is "hard" or "easy"? If you truly want to be a nurse then the amount of work required to earn a BSN and become eligible to take the NCLEX does not matter. You just do it.

[Zombiologist]

It's different. I went to ns with the attitude that I am a smart person that already had a Bachelors degree. How hard can it be? I was humbled in the first semester. Between labs and clinicals and classes. It's just different. Just go in with an open mind and be flexible.

[RN to be soon]

People 1 semester ahead of me always scare me about the classes they took before me but they weren't that even difficult. So I just wanted to prepare myself before nursing school. I don't want to listen to them anymore because they always tell me everything is hard but they arent really that difficult. I feel like they are doing that to just show off that they passed really hard classes where most everyone else failed but most everyone in my class passet with B or C.

[Extra Pickles]

There are people who think nursing school was no big deal and others who sweated through every course. no way to know what you'll think of it. if you're getting Bs in prereqs though you might want to prepare to do a lot more studying to keep on top of it, good luck.

[HouTx, BSN, MSN, EdD]

There are a couple of reasons that nursing school can be a humbling experience for students who have high pre-requisite GPAs. One of the seldom-acknowledged reasons is grade inflation. This phenomenon has become very obvious in the last 5 years ... the most common letter grade in college classes last year was an "A".... srsly. Take a look at the DATA. I can assure you that this is not due to better scholastic performance. So, a high GPA may not actually mean that the student is better prepared for the rigors of a nursing program.

The second reason? The study skills that worked fine with pre-reqs aren't going to produce the same results with nursing courses. Memorization and simple recall will not work any more. In order to make high grades (or pass) nursing courses, you'll have to learn clinical reasoning skills & apply the knowledge you acquired from those pre-reqs. At this point, if grade inflation was a factor in previous academic success, it can result in a double-whammy with plummeting grades.

Forewarned is forearmed. Don't shy away from those "hard" teachers in your basic science courses. They're doing you a favor in the long run.