[Almost] halfway done with 1st Semester.

Training2bRN · Oct 11, 2008

i think the first semester is the easiest at our school. our clinical is only 5 hours long this semester, but it's 12 hours long next semester.

half my classmates are failing (which is anything under 75% at my school). i don't understand why -- they seem like smart people, they do all the reading, and they study for tests. they work harder than me, and they know the material better than i do (i can tell, because they out perform me in lab all the time). but when it comes to taking tests, they do much worse than me. the tests have a lot of tricky questions, and they get fooled all the time.

i think the dropout/flunkout rate is 50% at my school after the first year. i think the school should work harder to retain these students. many of the students who are failing in my class speak english as a second language, and i wish the school would hire a bilingual teacher for them!

maebe · Oct 12, 2008

I am also almost done the first semester. I've heard it gets harder, but I believe that after getting our feet wet, some of the new concepts will fit into what we have already learned. Without prior knowledge, it is difficult to place the concepts. It also took me a couple of weeks to get used to how to read the textbooks, how to prepare for class, and how to write the tests. With that completed, I am now able to focus on the task at hand...acquiring knowledge!!

Good luck with the rest of your program, we're in it together!

CherryBlonde · Oct 12, 2008

WhiteOleander i'm in the same boat as you.We just took our first semester midterm this past Thursday. It was difficult. But other than that my clinicals are awesomly amazing and helpful and I have the best clinical teacher:redpinkhe. Our hospital area we are doing clinicals in have the nicest nurses too. Our first day the RN came in and let us watch some stuff and gave us some pointers on basic clincal stuff and also was talking to us about different fields we might be interested in.I really don't think things could get any better:heartbeat:up::heartbeat. As for school getting harder by the semster, I can see that actually happening too. :eek:

julbug75 · Oct 12, 2008

I can't believe we're halfway done with Semester 1 already. Crazy!

I am feeling pretty good so far. I was a little overwhelmed having 2 BIG exams in a 2 week period of time, but I did well on both and things have calmed down a little.

I set goals for myself each day, and take it one day at a time.

Each time an assignment is complete, a test is taken and passed, or a clinical day comes to a close, I envision myself closing a door behind me and entering another room with puzzles to solve in order to get to the next door. I view it as a challenge, and this is what drives me. :specs:

We can do it!!

RNDreamer · Oct 12, 2008

I'm approaching the half way point, and finishing up my Fundamentals class (it is 7 weeks long). So far, so good for me at least.

One student walk out of class and decided not to return. The avergae for our patho exam was low. I think now that we have been exposed to the exams, we know what to expect. I still suspect that we may lose a bunch of students this semester.

julbug75 · Oct 12, 2008

One student walk out of class and decided not to return. The avergae for our patho exam was low. I think now that we have been exposed to the exams, we know what to expect. I still suspect that we may lose a bunch of students this semester.

Kind of scary! Our Skills instructor told us that graduation rate was about 50% of the people who start - that's not so good if you ask me! :no:

RNDreamer · Oct 12, 2008

We are starting with about 170 students. I expect less than half of us will graduate.

Kind of scary! Our Skills instructor told us that graduation rate was about 50% of the people who start - that's not so good if you ask me!

polka-dot, RN · Oct 12, 2008

many of the students who are failing in my class speak english as a second language, and i wish the school would hire a bilingual teacher for them!

Won't they be expected to speak English at work?

newbie08 · Oct 12, 2008

We just hit midterm on 10/9. This semester is going by a lot faster than those first couple of weeks did, for sure!! We are on Fall Break through 10/15 Then start clinicals the following Tuesday. Yikes!! I have only seen a handful of our senior nursing students at my school's ANS meetings and SGA meetings and most of them are saying if you are doing well now then the rest shouldn't be much worse for you. They did pretty much all agree that F&E are hard to understand, though. So I will definitely be looking over that before I have to know it!! I'm not sure what the pass/fail rate is right now. There is one girl that has dropped out voluntarily so far (she has some heart problems) and a few more that are rumored to be failing out (average below 78). People don't really talk about their grades much at my school.

Anyway, congrats on making it half way through this semester and here's hoping the second half is just as passable as the first half!! :nurse:

june2009 · Oct 12, 2008

I'm in my second year of a diploma program. Right now I'm in psych nursing, and we only have one week left!!! Yeah!!! Psych is not my thing. After this week, We go to OB/peds and have eight weeks there. My grade is a very high B and I'm actually hopeful that I can bring it up to an A with our last exam and our final. Any way, we have gone from about 5 hrs of clinical in the first semester to about 20-24 hrs of clinical this semester. We have three full days in a row. It seems that psych is actually easier than our adult med-surge course. From what I understand, the OB/peds course is also easier. After this semester, we go to either complex med-surge, or critical care. That is where we're going to have problems. From what I understand, It's so much harder than anything else we've done. We'll see. Our exams have progressively gotten more difficult. Now we have all nclex style questions with no less than 5 alternate style questions per exam. (total of 50 questions per exam).

To answer your question, yes nursing school does get harder as you go along. However, all your knowledge builds upon previous knowledge. This helps you to prepare for more difficult theory and clinicals as you go along.