HOW DO I SURVIVE?

[bpenny87]

Hi Everyone,

First semester nursing student here. And no nursing school is not killing me (yet) but I needed to get your attention. I would just like to know what you all found to be the most challenging classes of your nursing program and how did you make it through? What are some great study tools you recommend. I always hear professors mention how terribly difficult nursing school is and that we will basically have no life and I just wanted to know if that is true for real students or are they just scaring us. Thanks for your responses!

[theRNJedi]

don't fret. Yes, nursing school is hard, but it's also hard to get in...so if you've accomplished that then you already achieved a huge milestone.

Nursing school is like a tsunami of information coming at you. but it's not set up to make you fail...it's set up to challenge you, develop you, and transform you in a professional nurse. how you engage and studiously work with and through those challenges will determine if you're cut out for it. It's rigorous because the expectations of a registered nurse is high...and you will have a licensing exam to take. (NCLEX)...so yes, ...it's the 'hard' that separates nurses from other healthcare positions.

For me, my hardest classes were theory and pharmacology. Find your learning style and method. I studied alone, then met with a single partner and we quizzed each other over the material, Then every once in a while I'd conduct a larger study group where I led and presented the material to my classmates. (we would rent library study rooms, find an empty classroom, and even picnic out in the grass) And I discovered in teaching the material to a classmate(s), I was comprehending the material in a more in depth fashion. Get to a point where you could teach the information...that means you've mastered it. then of course, some students never studied with anyone else...and that's just how they learned....simply reading the material by themselves. Find what works for you. Also, nursing school is a mix of regurgitating memorized content (i.e., reference ranges, medication classes, etc...) - however there's also the tests that require critical thinking...and developing your critical thinking skills is the single best thing a nursing student can aim to improve.

As far as having no life....well, yes and no. It really depends on how you manager you time. But in general, yes....nursing school is a ton of work and you just have to be disciplined. But also, I became best friends with all my nursing classmates and am still close to many of them; you become a cohort - a banded group of peers - and no doubt you will probably meet some of your lifelong best friends in the program.

-TheRNJedi