Easy?

I feel the exact opposite. Every horror story I have ever read is true! It's not that the material is hard..... if it were just course work, I'd be sailing through, because I do well with that. Add in skills and remembering the processes of applying and removing PPE, bathing, vitals, making beds, ambulating clients, performing ROM, charting, and now my mind is on overload. You don't pass skills, you don't go to clinical. Our skills check tomorrow will determine whether we get to go to clinical next week. So we start clinical next week, as well as have our first exams in Funds and Assessment/Pharmacology, and also start a new Unit.

I started clinical today! Maybe that will spice things up haha! I have my first health assessment quiz on Monday so we shall see if I should be working harder! Thanks for all your posts! Glad there are some people in the same boat! And to anyone who isn't you can do this!!

Maybe I'm backwards, but I found my first semester the most difficult of all the semesters and received my lowest scores that semester. After my first semester, I found a study strategy that worked so well for me that I found myself opening my books and taking notes less and less with each passing week. I will never say nursing school was easy, because it was far from that; in fact, it was one of the most challenging aspects of my personal growth into who I am today. Since my study strategy was as effective as it was, the material SEEMED easier to grasp, but trust me, there were other things that stressed me the hell out--Oh, and the impact it had on my family--yeah, that was pretty stressful.

I found the first semester the most challenging due to culture shock and the hype everyone puts around nursing school. After awhile nursing school becomes part of who you are and second nature so I never found school "hard." What was challenging was that every thing that could go wrong in one's personal life seemed to happen to me during nursing school...death of grandparent, parent's divorce, best friend committing suicide, break up of my son's father and me...nice try world, I still graduated with 3.5.

I'm not bitter I swear.

I know what you are saying. I don't think this first semester is easy, but I also don't think it is as hard as some people claim. The academic side isn't that difficult, but the skills and clinical experience are definitely challenging for me. Every once in a while I get overwhelmed thinking about all the many things I need to work on to be a good nurse, and then I remember I've only been doing this for a few weeks now.

I found the first semester the most challenging due to culture shock and the hype everyone puts around nursing school. After awhile nursing school becomes part of who you are and second nature so I never found school "hard." What was challenging was that every thing that could go wrong in one's personal life seemed to happen to me during nursing school...death of grandparent, parent's divorce, best friend committing suicide, break up of my son's father and me...nice try world, I still graduated with 3.5.

I'm not bitter I swear.

Damn right, girl.

I'm currently in my 3rd semester and trust me it does get harder. The first semester is really basics and seems very common sense because you learn a lot about patient safety and how to CYA. But after that, welcome to a whirlwind of what nursing is really about. You start really focusing in on disease processes and how to prioritize. Maybe you will be one of the few lucky ones that just understands it immediately but most everyone in our class has had to work on this. Your tests become more about which patient can you save in a mass casualty and who should you tend to first. It may seem simple but when you get two patients with almost exactly the same disease process and your teacher is asking you to pick which one you can save and how, you really have to think. It's still possible to get A's on tests and do well in the class, but it's not just about memorization and common sense. It's about critical thinking. I wish you good luck! Even with each semester progressively getting harder, I love every second of it! And if you turn out to be one of the few that can fly through classes easily, remember to keep a humble spirit and try to help others around you who might be struggling. Nursing is about team work and there is no greater place to learn that than in nursing school. :)

Hard is subjective. I'm busy and stressed but I haven't felt it was super hard, just different. I'm graduating in December and I think things got easier as I went. First semester was culture shock and relearning how to study.

They usually begin with easy knowledge based questions in tests. A&P will be repeated throughout nursing school but with higher levels of nursing management. Getting the knowledge is easy. Applying it is a different story. Eventually they should start to work you into nclex style questions where basically every answer is right. If your college is not doing this I'd be weary and get a nclex book to start learning how to apply your knowledge and critical thinking. If this is not challenging, try case study type questions.

Well I'm in Canada- but as of 2015 we will right the NCLEX so they started NCLEX type questions from day one so we should be quite prepared by the time it comes to write it ! I'm not saying nursing is the easiest thing ever I just feel it's quite a bit easier than I thought it was and I am going to a public school essentially so it's not money grab they legit want us to succeed . I think the fact that we have already taken A&P, micro and patho makes it easier to manage!

Thanks for everyone input and best of luck!

Write* not right! Lol

My program does NCLEX questions right off the bat too and encouraged us to get our own NCLEX books to start questions, even if we didn't know the content yet we got used to the format. SATA questions are part of every test we take so they aren't scary anymore either. I'm guessing I'm somewhere around 5-6000 NCLEX questions on my own in 4 semesters. (94 days to go!!)