How do you study?

where do you begin? How to you study? with all of the resourses available what works best for you?

Here's how I do it.

1. I begin with the instructor's list of objectives. What do they want me to know? I look those over, then read the text covering the material. I don't try to absorb every point on the first try. (About an hour and a half to two hours per two hour lecture.)

2. THEN I GO TO CLASS. That is in caps because it is very important to have a look at the material before I go to class. This helps me get more out of (and participate more in) lecture. I usually audio record the lecture.

3. I go back through the material taking focused notes on information I need to know with the Section Objectives and the instructor's powerpoints as a guide. I listen to selected areas of the lecture audio recording if needed (rarely). I focus on Nursing Actions for each item, especially what is done "first" because that's how they test us. If needed I'll break out some of those additional resources. (2-3 hours)

4. Now I use the Med Surg Study guide, ATI guide, NCLEX Books, Review Questions from the text and those other resources to test myself on how well I know the materal. I often do this in study groups as we discuss and argue about the rationales. (4 hours).

If you add the above hours up, you get about 8 hours per lecture; two lectures a week gives you 16 hours per week of studying. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

That's what I do.

I begin by reading the chapters before I go to class, I also highlight while I'm reading.

While I'm in class I highlight anything extra in a different color the instructor says if I missed it during my first reading. I also take notes in my book of extra things my instructor says so all of my information is in one place.

Then I come home and type outlines of the highlighted material in my book.

I complete the workbook for each chapter we are going to be tested on, then make flashcards from the workbook questions.

I go through my typed outlines and highlight the answers to the objectives we are given at the beginning of each lecture.

Then I study my flashcards & typed outlines focusing especially on the objectives I have highlighted!

Hope this helps!! Good luck to you! The thing that helped me the most was writing key things my instructors said in my textbook so I was flipping through a million different notebooks & trying to keep up with loose papers!

Thanks for the tips! They all sound very helpful.:)

Thank you for the suggestions...Nursing school can be so overwhelming when you are given so much to read in more than one subject. Now, that I have read the advice given here, I am going to start putting it into action. I never thought to make flashcards out of the questions in the study guide...awesome idea!!! And highlighting in a different color from what the instructor goes over is another good idea.

Thank you so much for the tips!