Commuters- study time saving tips?

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hello, I drive 2 hours up and back to my nursing program and wanted to know if their were any helpful tips for commuters to save studying time. I did have someone tell me to try record myself reading my assignments and play in the car. what else can I do in the car to save study time? thanks

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Specializes in Critical Care, Capacity/Bed Management.

Well the only thing you can do safely in your car is to listen to voice recordings, whether that is you reading the textbook out loud or listening to your professor's lecture is up to you.

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i would also recommend some sort of hand held recorder (or one on your phone) so you can capture ideas for care plans, papers, etc..

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Many ebooks have a text-to-speech (TTS) feature, meaning that you can have your phone read you the text. I used to go on Amazon and find texts on the course(s) in question and look for options that were available as ebooks with TTS. I would then listen to the material on my long commute. It helped reinforce the material and turned 3+ hours a day of otherwise non-productive time into study sessions.

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Finding ebooks with test-to-speech sounds like a great idea for any nursing student. You could catch up on reading while going for a run. Of course it works best if you are an auditory learner but it's better than having non-productive down time.

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Specializes in M/S, pedi.

I traveled an hour from school to work 4 days a week and I did best when I listened to recorded lectures. Text to speech is ok but has difficulty with nursing terms at times.

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Wow, thanks everyone for your wonderful tips and ideas. @203bravo I started doing that for my in class clinical. My instructor is VERY prestigious with the care plans and even want us to write the rationale/care plans not like the examples in the book. So she started stating want she wants so I started recording her classes. Care plans are 40% of our grade.

@vanillabean I never heard of this and would be extremely interested but my program (LVN) had books included in the tuition and didn't have to purchase them.

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@vanillabean I never heard of this and would be extremely interested but my program (LVN) had books included in the tuition and didn't have to purchase them.

My books were not included in my tuition, so I bought all of the books required by my program and got additional ebooks on those topics with TTS to be able to listen to the subject matter in the car. It was an additional out-of-pocket expense, but was well worth it (to me).

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When I did this, I recorded lectures and played them in the car. Back then it was cassette tapes. Sometimes I used the bus system for part of the commute and listened to the tapes with earphones.

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I would either listen to lecture recordings or do audio flash cards during my drive. I would record "flash cards", with pauses at the right spot so I could answer as I listened. I learned lab values, terms, s/sx, etc. this way.

Good luck! :)

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Thanks everyone! :)

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