When you reading assignments is just TOO much

Be realistic in your expectations. If the demands of your life outside of school make it impossible for you to do all the reading (or other work asked by your school), you need to accept the fact that you will not always be the top student. You have made choices in your life that are important to you -- and that you feel are right for you -- and those choices come with consequences. Accept those consequences with grace.

Focus on the work that is required to pass each course and take a look at your other committments to see if there are a few compromises you can make there to give yourself more time for your studies. Understand that no one can be "on top" in several different aspects of life at one time. Make a few compromises here and there and keep moving forward.

I always looked at the syllabus and outline the teacher provided and only read what was on that. I worked and realized that I couldn't be a 4.0 student. You make some concessions when you go back to school as an adult.

when you are learning and studying in a field that is totally new to you it's hard to know what is important to focus on and what isn't. if you focus on the wrong things, it can affect your grade on a test. having been in nursing for a long time i can tell you what i might think your instructors are going to think is important in certain areas as you get into them. i might be wrong though. tests can be extremely subjective according to what any particular instructor might think is important. i would look carefully at the objectives you are given at the beginning of each course. listen carefully to what you are told in lecture. some instructors will stress the things that are important for you to know, but you have to be paying attention. they may show up on tests. as you go through your nursing classes you will find that many rationales build upon others, but look for things that seem to be exceptions to the rules. those usually make for good test questions. something i've been picking up on lately in hospital nursing is that there is a definite trend of patients in certain illness categories. diabetes type ii is running rampant these days and you can pretty much bet that you are going to get tested on it, so learn as much about it as you can including the treatments for it and the complications that go along with the disease. heart and lung diseases are another big area with a lot of hospitalized patients. you are going to see a lot of patients with various types of pneumonia and heart failure all throughout your clinical experiences. an understanding of how fluids and electrolytes affect people is also very important to know. all of these are areas that students are tested rigorously over again and again. in fundamentals you learn about the difference between sterile and non-sterile. these are important concepts.

by the time you get to nursing school you will have been introduced to anatomy and physiology, some pathophysiology, chemistry and psychology. you will be expected to review it again and again as you study various diseases in nursing school. nursing school introduces you to how these various diseases are treated medically and by nursing (the nursing interventions). for tests you will asked to consider all of that science information when responding to questions--it won't be given to you, but you will be expected to know it and put it all together. all the knowledge needs to be combined to come up with logical solutions to helping patients professionally. while your nursing textbooks aren't always going to explain those connections for you, it is often going to be up to you to continually challenge yourself to ask and answer "why" a patient has this symptom, or why a doctor is ordering this particular medication rather than another one, and why do we do this intervention for xyz problem the patient is having as opposed to this intervention for abc problem that is similar. finding the answers to those "why" questions is going to help improve your understanding as well as your grade on tests. nothing is ever going to be "just because that's the way it's done". there is logical thinking and rationale behind every medical and nursing action that is taken. seek those; know those; and, your grades will improve. getting together with other students and talking about these things will help stimulate your thinking process. find mentors where ever you can. don't be afraid to bounce questions off your instructors. ask and seek the answers to those "why" questions. after years and years of nursing, i'm still asking some "why" questions. the seeking of knowledge and understanding in this career never stops.

a nclex review book is a good way to prepare and study for tests. here are some web sites that have some information about nclex style questions (application type questions) and strategy in answering them:

• http://go.dbcc.edu/hhps/nursing/study_skills.html - study skills for the nursing student from daytona beach community college nursing department with some good advice.
  http://go.dbcc.edu/hhps/nursing/test_taking_skills.html - test taking skills also from daytona beach community college nursing department. a couple of sample questions and how to choose the correct answer for these application type questions.
  
• http://www.learningext.com/students/qofweek.asp - question of the week. every monday a question from the online nclex-rn examination course from ncsbn and it's answer is posted here on this page.
  
• http://www3.us.elsevierhealth.com/cgi-bin/mosby/cdonline/saxton/question - mosby's question of the week from mosby's comprehensive review of nursing. also has archived questions that you can access.