How much time do you *really*spend studying?

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I am curious if I am doing too much, or not enough! I would love to hear how often everyone studies and if you dont mind sharing, what your general GPA/letter grade is. I spend at least 3 hours every night studying, and weekends are a free for all. This has worked well so far (pre-reqs) but I havent taken my first nursing test yet... I hope its enough!

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I am in the same position. My first test is 09/15 in Adult Nursing I. I currently study about 2-4 hrs. per day and a lot on the weekends. I've done NCLEX style questions from the Kozier & Erb (textbook for class) web site and at the end of the chapter. I would like to see what kind of grades others are making and how much time is spent studying.

Thanks,

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Specializes in Emergency Dept. Trauma. Pediatrics.

I spent about 45 mins studying for our first exam of this semester. I met up with a friend and we reviewed some notes. I got an 86% of the exam. I have no focus to study. I try. I don't succeed very well in my efforts, I just get way to bored. I primarily get B's for my classes.

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I studied less and less as I completed each semester. I have an A average (95%) and a 4.0 GPA

Nursing 1: Fundamentals: about 4-5 hours/day, pretty much every day

Nursing 2: Med-Surg and Psychiatric: about 2-3 hours per day every day, and it would have been far less if I hadn't been running study groups to help other students

Nursing 3: Med-Surg and OB: well so far, less than 1 hour per day.

The deeper I got into nursing school, the less it seemed I needed to study to understand the material and maintain high grades. I had a summer externship this past July & August, which greatly helped my understanding of nursing and the course material as well.

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I've been spending about two hours a day studying. I have a big Fundamentals test on Tuesday, so I will have to spend a lot of time in the books tomorrow and Monday.

I got As in my pre-reqs and I'm hoping to continue that in my nursing classes. Fingers crossed...

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Specializes in Critical Care.

it depended on how comfortable i was with the material. my studying greatly decreased as i continued in nursing school. i never studied every night. review books helped more than the textbooks. graduated with a 3.8 GPA

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Specializes in Operating Room.

On the weekdays, I don't do anything besides school and work. Sometimes I sneak in time to see my boyfriend. Otherwise, time is spent purely on my education. I even do homework at work. Lately I've been spending 4+ hours on pass/fail assignments such as concept maps and medication reconciliations. This must be the "busy work" semester. On tests, I give myself two days to study. I do spend a lot of time reading the books and writing down notes, I'm a good note taker, so two days is good although I always feel like I need more time to study. However with the course load and 20 hours of clinical a week and a part time job, that isn't going to happen. I try :)

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I study enough to get all the number facts and new terminology I need to know. Usually a few hours before the test. Most of it is pretty much common sense right now so it's not too bad. I've made a couple A's and a couple of B's. I'm comfortable with that. :)

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At least 4 a day for Med Surg. Fortunately the other class I'm taking does not have any exams.

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Specializes in MedSurg, Clinic, ER.

Just started in my LVN program, so I have nothing but participation/preparation points at this time (no tests yet)... but I have developed a schedule of 2 hours at night (7-9) during the week for reading and review of notes and 6-8 hours each day of the weekend (read 50 min, rest 10 min) for my advance reading (for the upcoming week) and any preparation assignments I can get done. We are going in to week 3 on Tuesday and I am working on pre-reading that stuff.

I have 4 classes other than clinical, so I try to fit a bit in each day from each class. So far, I've had a couple of days that didn't go as planned, so it helps to be able to be flexible.

I have used this method with other non-nursing coursework and found it to be very successful.

Test review (in the past... don't know how well it will work for NS exams) consists of 30 minutes to an hour purely reviewing objectives and key points of the chapters to be tested on. By this time I've spent a little bit of time each day covering the material, so I've developed a familiarity with it.

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If we have a test a week or a week and a half a part, i dont study the night that i took the last test. But then after that I study about 4 hours on week days and about 6-7 on sat and sunday unless i have clinical that day.....I'm in an ADN program and we are very fast pase, not much time to mess around.

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Specializes in Pediatric Hem/Onc.

Um....what the majority of you guys are doing in a day? I'm doing in a week. I feel like a slacker lol I'm in my last 5 months of an ADN program and I honestly say 4-5 hours weekly has been about my average.

To slightly redeem myself, I have the Saunders NCLEX review (highly recommend it!) on my iTouch so I do questions during down time at work. The RNs are also great for giving me feedback when I need it. They usually groan when I come strolling up and say "So we were talking about this in class today....."

I don't think it's quantity, so much as quality. I also think there isn't a "right" answer. Some people can grasp a concept in 15 minutes; others it takes 5 hours. As long as you're kicking butt in class it doesn't really matter :)

ETA: My GPA is between 3.5-3.6 - can't remember the exact number. 3.56, maybe? Something like that.

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