Help with Advanced A&P

I don't know if it's just me but advanced a&p seems to be a lot harder than general. I understand what the teacher is teaching but I seem to study and forget or get mixed up the things that I study. Any advice on how to get through this class?

[CardioTrans, BSN, RN]

Can you elaborate on what you mean?? As far as forgetting or mixed up? If you can give an example, maybe I can help you. Flash cards for each system may help, but elaborate for me and I will help you best I can.

[eredlin]

I seem to sit down to take the lecture exams and forget everything that I learned or studied. I look at a question and think I know the answer but then get stuck between 2 answers. that's what I mean by mixed up. I understand the anatomy part and can easily remeber it. It's the physiology part that just doesn't seem to want to stick with me. I studied for the last test(rewrote the notes and said them out loud), went in to the test pretty confident and got a D on it. I just don't know if anyone has any suggestions on how to get this stuff down. Thanks for replying, your help is appreciated.

[Bumashes, MSN, APRN, NP]

Hmmm, I am one of those people that has a photographic memory. So I'm good in science classes but crappy in math. I don't know if you have a particular style of learning that is preferred or not, but I'll offer some of my advice. By the way, I have four years of teacher education, so I know a little bit about advising study habits.

Study partners are always a plus because one person may have a better understanding in some areas than the other, or have taken better notes. Get a couple of people in class to trade phone numbers with you, so you can contact each other for assistance.

Evaluate your study enviroment. Quiet? Loud? Light background noise? White noise? Music? Inside or Outside? Cold or Hot? While eating or drinking something? In a tub of hot water? Try each of these situations for a short period of study. Say, 10 minutes studying in each environment. See how much info you can spew back after each environment (and I mean just pull out a blank paper and write down anything you remember without having questions as prompts), then select the one that was the most beneficial. Oh and don't study the same piece of material in each environment as that would ruin the purpose of this test.

Also, you can alternate your studying with a hobby. What I do is get a book, read for 15-20 minutes, then study for 15-20 minutes, read, study, read, etc. You could also do this with a video game, dancing, cooking, etc. This helps it seem a lot less like studying for me. It avoids overdose on info and keeps me from getting bored. The enemy of quality study is boredom. Without a lick of interest, you won't absorb near as much info.

Try different ways of learning also. Reading, picturing, drawing, speaking to someone else about it, anacronyms, rhyming words, copying over and over. And, I know this sounds weird, but bear with me. My husband has the strangest way of learning I've ever encountered. He's got ADHD by the way. While he was studying for his license to be an insurance agent, he was getting more and more frustrated every day. He couldn't learn the stuff. It was kind of like Micro because all it was was a bunch of definitions of words you are unfamiliar with. Straight up memorization. We discovered soon after, however, that he could learn perfectly well when I read the definitions to him. This is different than hearing it in class because it's your own notes being read to you in your own words. Also, it didn't work when he read it aloud, only when I did. In the end, my husband, who has rarely been known to make above a C in anything but gym, scored a 92 on the test. Who'd have thought?

Find a good site online where you can read up on things you don't understand. You already have a good support group here, so check off support.

There are a few other things that are mainly for people who just have strange learning habits. If you'd like to hear them, then IM me. Hope this helps a bit.

[eredlin]

Thank you for all that information. What you said does help. I took another lecture exam tonight and I think I figured some things out. He only lectures off his notes that he has on powerpoint and he puts them on the computer so we can print them off. This helps a lot so I'm not so worried about writing things down and I can add things if I want. When I study I rewrite all the notes and say them out loud. I went in to the test tonight with a good amount of confidence(I should have studied more though) and i got a C on the test which is ok with me since I have a's and b's in my nursing classes. My class and I were talking and we've noticed that he's making the questions harder than what he is teaching. We can understand what he's teaching and remember it and then we get these questions that are very confusing. I've also noticed that it seems to be between 2 answers and maybe only one word in the answer makes it correct which is difficult also. It would be nice if I could study more during the day but I have a 1 yr old and a 4 yr old, so that doesn't work well to often. I have a friend that I could study with but our schedules are very conflicting and the people in my class are just not a very friendly group, which sucks. I'm happy with a C in this class, I know that shouldn't be good enough, I've never been an A student, so if I get a C in this and do well in my nursing classes I'll be happy. Thanks again.