Do you read the entire book?

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Hi there! I am going to be starting nursing school on the 27th and I just got my fundamentals book today. So I started reading our assigned chapters and WOW. So much information! Very interesting though, not dry like the sciences were. I am planning on seriously reading the entire book/what's assigned by the professor and then extra by using outside sources. But my question is, is it possible to read it all? How many hours a day/per chapter do you spend reading? Do you power through the whole chapter or take breaks? Take notes as you go? Read it more than once? I just want to prepare myself because I can tell this will not be like the prereqs at all! I have been reading all the other posts about how to study better/take notes and I will definitely use that as well. I just want to see how everyone handles the massive amounts of reading. Thank you! :specs:

Specializes in Emergency Nursing.

It TOTALLY depends on your teacher and and how careful he or she is in tailoring the curriculum to what he or she thinks you need to know and, correspondingly, how careful he or she is in constructing the test to match the lecture. If curriculum test bank questions are used, he or she may be limited.

The thing is, nursing education is not performed by educators. It's performed by nurses. That means you're going to get wide variation in teaching effectiveness and, frankly, understanding of the purposes of the material. Add to this that very often nurse educators have their didactic hands tied by administration and you have a recipe for disaster.

An easy way around this, for the kind and self-aware nursing instructor, is to provide study guides AFTER the tests have been made but before they've been proctored. If you have such a teacher, be grateful and realize that you have a teacher who knows his or her own limitations and truly cares about getting the pertinent stuff into you.

Furthermore, he or she probably realizes that nursing school is more about immersion and, ultimately, preparation to take the NCLEX and not at all about crushing souls.

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Just curious, whether you read all of the chapters, charts, tables five times or whether you just skimmed the notes what is/was your GPA? I was just wondering if there is a correlation between those who read everything to understand the material and those who read just to pass the exams/ NCLEX,which is indeed the ultimate goal.

Finishing my prereqs (last semester, woohoo!) and, according to my credits, I'm almost a junior. I have never read every word of anything (except in a philosophy course). In a few classes I never even opened the book. Mostly, I use the text book for reference and make sure I participate in lectures. My GPA has been a 4.0 since I started college in 2010. Hopefully, I will be able to maintain something close to that when the program starts!

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Specializes in Emergency Nursing.

Finishing my prereqs (last semester, woohoo!) and, according to my credits, I'm almost a junior. I have never read every word of anything (except in a philosophy course). In a few classes I never even opened the book. Mostly, I use the text book for reference and make sure I participate in lectures. My GPA has been a 4.0 since I started college in 2010. Hopefully, I will be able to maintain something close to that when the program starts!

Good luck with that.

I've been thinking lately that nursing school isn't as truly hard as it is difficult to survive. The work load is really stupendous. it's a lot about time management once you're used to NCLEX style questions. Unfortunately, even really smart people struggle for a long time with the questions.

I finished with a 3.80 over all and a 3.65 in NURS classes. My excuses are several: I am a married man with children, I worked 24 hours a week in a hospital as a tech, and once I learned how the program worked, I reduced my intensity a lot and started just chilling more. I still finished second in my class to the fifty year old lady with no job who was changing careers from having been a chemist.

I am NOT saying I could have had a 4.0 if I wanted. I could not. The learning curve for me, once I got into nursing classes for the style of questions we saw, as flat as it was, still made for a dip in my statistical performance.

That said, you will hear a lot of people say "C equals RN" or whatever your school's minimum requirement is. It's true that once you've passed boards and started working, no one will care what your GPA in college was, but at the same time, I think people who say this are usually covering for their own inadequacies. It's certainly not anything I would ever say, and while it may not make a difference once you're working, it can sometimes make a difference in getting hired. Magnet hospitals for example not only prefer BSN prepared nurses, they often want nurses with a track record of educational excellence and diligence.

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Good luck with that.

I've been thinking lately that nursing school isn't as hard as it is difficult to survive. The work load is really stupendous. it's a lot about time management once you're used to NCLEX style questions.

I finished with a 3.80 over all and a 3.65 in NURS classes. My excuses are several: I am a married man with children, I worked 24 hours a week in a hospital as a tech, and once I learned how the program worked, I reduced my intensity a lot and started just chilling more. I still finished second in my class to the fifty year old lady with no job who was changing careers from having been a chemist.

I am NOT saying I could have had a 4.0 if I wanted. I could not. The learning curve for me, once I got into nursing classes for the style of questions we saw, as flat as it was, still made for a dip in my statistical performance.

That said, you will hear a lot of people say "C equals RN" or whatever your school's minimum requirement is. It's true that once you've passed boards and started working, no one will care what your GPA in college was, but at the same time, I think people who say this are usually covering for their own inadequacies. It's certainly not anything I would ever say, and while it may not make a difference once you're working, it can sometimes make a difference in getting hired

In a way i have to disagree. I think GPA matters if you plan to go to graduate school. Some people spend their time just trying to pass and then are left taking extra classes for a few years to boost their GPA for graduate school. Personally, i strive to learn the material not just enough to pass the exams. I mean, if you pass doing the bare minimum, graduate with a 3.2 GPA, and pass the NCLEX on the first try then thats great but this is just my opinion.

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Specializes in Emergency Nursing.

You're quite right. GPA is essential if you plan to go on to more schooling. Great point.

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Good luck with that.

I've been thinking lately that nursing school isn't as truly hard as it is difficult to survive. The work load is really stupendous. it's a lot about time management once you're used to NCLEX style questions. Unfortunately, even really smart people struggle for a long time with the questions.

I finished with a 3.80 over all and a 3.65 in NURS classes. My excuses are several: I am a married man with children, I worked 24 hours a week in a hospital as a tech, and once I learned how the program worked, I reduced my intensity a lot and started just chilling more. I still finished second in my class to the fifty year old lady with no job who was changing careers from having been a chemist.

I am NOT saying I could have had a 4.0 if I wanted. I could not. The learning curve for me, once I got into nursing classes for the style of questions we saw, as flat as it was, still made for a dip in my statistical performance.

That said, you will hear a lot of people say "C equals RN" or whatever your school's minimum requirement is. It's true that once you've passed boards and started working, no one will care what your GPA in college was, but at the same time, I think people who say this are usually covering for their own inadequacies. It's certainly not anything I would ever say, and while it may not make a difference once you're working, it can sometimes make a difference in getting hired. Magnet hospitals for example not only prefer BSN prepared nurses, they often want nurses with a track record of educational excellence and diligence.

Oh, I know NS is going to be a whole other beast! My goal this semester is to better my study skills, meaning actually study. I, too, am married with small children, I work, and my husband is active duty military; so, he is gone quite a bit. I need to learn how to make time to study. If you have any tips, please let me know.

I do disagree in regards to GPA. Grad school in extremely hard to get into and that's my plan after I get some good experience. Hopefully I can get myself together and keep at least a 3.75 :)

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Specializes in Emergency Nursing.
Oh, I know NS is going to be a whole other beast! My goal this semester is to better my study skills, meaning actually study. I, too, am married with small children, I work, and my husband is active duty military; so, he is gone quite a bit. I need to learn how to make time to study. If you have any tips, please let me know. I do disagree in regards to GPA. Grad school in extremely hard to get into and that's my plan after I get some good experience. Hopefully I can get myself together and keep at least a 3.75 :)
Totally doable! All the best to you. I didn't mean to sound like I was saying GPA isn't important. I was actually trying to say the opposite. Sorry if I didn't express that well.Study tips...hmm.Everyone is different. The best thing you can do is dissect your tests and tailor your study accordingly; I.e. study to the way your instructor makes the tests as best you can.Doing this at least at first will refine a method that cane be applied to any class.
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I just go through the book and cover the learning outcomes. I use that as a guide to skim through the book. Once I reach one of the points, I will read those paragraphs and write out the main idea of the learning outcome and move on. It usually takes me an 2 to 3 hours to get through a chapter. One reading assignment has a hundred pages this week, it may take me a little longer.

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Totally doable! All the best to you. I didn't mean to sound like I was saying GPA isn't important. I was actually trying to say the opposite. Sorry if I didn't express that well.Study tips...hmm.Everyone is different. The best thing you can do is dissect your tests and tailor your study accordingly; I.e. study to the way your instructor makes the tests as best you can.Doing this at least at first will refine a method that cane be applied to any class.

I know what you mean though. Ive heard many times that when in nursing you stop trying to get straight As and just focus on passing because it gets difficult and overwhelming.

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Congrats on starting nursing school! I found that only reading according to the power points was helpful for me. I graduated this past May, and never read completely through any of my nursing textbooks. Honestly, you have to figure out what works best for you. If you decide to read the entire book or chapters, take a break after an hour or so of reading and do something else for a few mins to give your mind a break. I would do some cleaning, or attend to my kids.

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Specializes in ED.

I have no idea what my nursing class GPA equals out to, but I've made all A's and B's the past three semesters, and I made a 96 last week on my first peds exam. Reading entire chapters would just be a waste of my time.

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I don't think we read the entire book but most of it. Reading is what works best for me so I read every single assigned chapter at least once. Then when I study the slides I refer to the text to clear anything up. Even though all the reading was tedious, I was reading the same info 3 different ways then usually seeing on the DVD and step by step in the clinical skills book. This semester I'm going to try outlining. Info from the texts will be in black, info from slides in blue, important lab values/test info in green, etc.

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