Any study tips and advice for nursing school?

[brooks222]

I'm very interested in hearing about how you guys study for your nursing classes. i'm in my first semester of nursing school and the work is not hard, it's just the volume of work that we have to do. I'm returning to school after receiving my bachelor's almost 8 years ago, where i graduated at the top of my class doing very little studying. I had high test scores and a high G.P.A. in high school and barely ever opened a book. At this point I feel as though I don't even know how to study or what my learning style is. I would love some tips or advice for how to find a groove and what techniques people use to study and do well in their classes. thanks!

[pmabraham, BSN, RN]

Learn your learning style, and go with it, while being willing to adapt for each class/semester. DO plan ahead, and stay organized. Make it a point to do NCLEX questions every day and review the rationale for all of the answers.

[havehope]

I would focus on finding out your learning style, like now. Reason I say this- when I got into Med Surg I, I was trying to figure out what worked best for me. This caused me to constantly struggle. If you get your learning style down pat it will help a whole lot! I did lots of concept maps, for some reason this helped me. I'm a visual learner. I found for learning diagnostic tests, I would youtube it. That was I big help. I could close my eyes and picture it.

[springchick1, ADN, RN]

Study groups aren't for everyone, and everyone here will have an opinion on them but it's what helped me get through school. It was me and two other girls and we kept it small like that.

We did the reading on our own and would write down questions we had. When we got together, we talked through things that confused us and we did lots and lots of practice questions. We each had NCLEX review books but we had different ones to have more questions.

We would talk through the questions and defend our answers. Then, we would look up the answer and talk through the rationale. It was really helpful doing it this way because you may be thinking one way, but when someone else explains their thinking, or can explain the rationale in a different way, it really helped with learning the material.