how did you study?

Nurses General Nursing

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ok im taking A&P 2 and i have a huge test tomorrow on the muscle and nervous system. our teacher has a lot of stuff cramed into this test it seems like plus 4 essays. my question is when you guys were in school how did you study for A&P without making yourself go nuts about it?

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This is a great place to get some info!

Kept telling myself to "Buck up Buttercup" and put in the hours. I tried all sorts of methods - flashcards, coloring books, groups, reading, etc... But really for me it got down to the repetition.

get some easy study time in by reading your notes onto a tape recorder and listening to it in your going to and from school/work. Works great for last min reviewing, you can even listen to it laying in your bed at night or while staring at your notes...if you do that, you won't daydream as much and you zip thru your notes fast!!

Specializes in Trauma Surgery, Nursing Management.

A&P is all memorization. Make flash cards, then study them for an hour at a time, give yourself a 15 minute break, then do it again. I did this for 3 cycles, then hit the bed. I kinda had some weird dreams, but I was able to commit the material to memory. When I was able to do that, I was able to build upon the knowledge and the material made sense to me. The body is mostly about logic, so don't stress yourself out too much. A&P is the nuts and bolts of medical science, so if you can master it, then you will have an easier time learning the rest.

When I was an undergrad (probably before you were born), I had an English professor actually BAN pen and paper from class. I thought this was weird. She wanted us to LISTEN actively instead of WRITE actively. I got so much more out of lecture when I learned this way. If you can allow yourself to listen instead of write (I would absolutely take a tape recorder with me to class though), you are exposed to the material. If you go home and listen to the tape, you will gain further understanding. If you then write out flash cards, you are reinforcing the material. Adults must see and hear things at least three times in order to remember what they are learning. (That's why you hear commercials repeat numbers 3 times...a nifty trick I learned when I was in advertising.)

What methods are you currently using? Are you in a study group?

i usually try and write and listen during lecture but i think your right you get it better when you just listen. but i write down what she says and writes (but her notes are not organized they sometimes jump from one thing to a totally different thing) but i currently re typed by notes and we got a CD with our books that explains eerything pretty good with pictures and videos kinda like a slide show and the voice talks, there are quizes with it so i did a few of them on the muscle portion but i just tried to type up all my notes and get them in a organized fashion so i can read through them easily...im deffinitly gana try just listenign more during lecture because i agree i am writting too much stuff and not actually listening, since i am re typing my notes anyway using the book and CD provided i think i can get away without writting EVERYTHING down in my note book during lecture....right now as i look through my notes i feel like i know it but i know when i get the test (i had this teacher before for a&p1 that her tests will screw me up and im gana go blank) it just seems like theres so many little things going on with like these sliding filament theorys and neurotransmitters that its hard to keep it all straight especialy when the teacher goes and re words it TOTALLY different on the test...im probably stressing out more than i should but i really would love at least a B on this test

Specializes in LTC.

Flash cards, I bought a skeleton to remember the bones his name was Bonez. Study group. Coloring books were not for me , I was too focused on making it look pretty. :) Study , study, study. Not easy.

Specializes in LTC.

almost forgot mnemomics ! slowly lower timmys pants to the curly hairs. My chiropractor gave me that one to remember the bones in our hands... which bones... I forgot.

my teacher recorded lectures and put them on sale in the bookstore....i would not watch tv unless it was dr g, trauma in the er, or something medical i could learn from. I listened to the lecture day & night. along with that i would never read the book more than once, instead i took good notes, and read them over if need be because my notes were in a language I could understand. for fun i would visit the books website and do activities or matching games they had. Good luck you can do it!

I used flashcardexchange.com,,, helped me alot!!!

get some easy study time in by reading your notes onto a tape recorder and listening to it in your going to and from school/work. Works great for last min reviewing, you can even listen to it laying in your bed at night or while staring at your notes...if you do that, you won't daydream as much and you zip thru your notes fast!!

My primary study method was flashcards, but since I had a 45 minute drive to my nursing school, I also did the study tape thing. Very helpful!

Do you have an area of concentration? If yes, great. Otherwise, repetition would get it to sink it and if somehow understand how mechanism work, that would be a plus.

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