Is nursing school REALLY that hard?

I just started the 2 year ADN program at my community college about a week ago. I am actually the youngest in my program at 18, and I have no nursing experience. Before I started, I obsessed over blogs and spent a lot of nights wondering if I could even make it through nursing school. I graduated high school in the top 5% of my class with a good ACT score, and I'm generally a hard worker. I am just wondering, was nursing school as hard as you thought it would be and if so, why?

KindaBack said:
Having earned degrees in engineering and chemistry, I can assure you that "they" have no idea what they're talking about.

The first thing that entered my mind when I saw the comment about a BSN being "the hardest" degree was "Oh, Hell No. Put me in an engineering major and watch me sink..."

Nursing school being the hardest degree to earn by the Guinness Book of world records? Omg xD

No, shot down by the Guinness themselves. They clearly stated that they don't recognize that kind of stuff.

How the heck is medical school not difficult to nursing school?

Doctors go to school for 8 years just to be called a doctor, that doesn't include their field of speciality which nurses don't have to worry about. If they did, what would be the point of a doctor? 8 years of medical school + the field of their choosing(Neurology, cardiology, urology, etc to work at a hospital or clinic) doesn't sound like 1 year to 2 years of nursing school.

To say that Guinness book of world records verifies BSN as the hardest degree to complete is bogus and to say that would be like saying medical school is easy. Oh really? Then there would be more medical students and the shortage of doctors and nurses wouldn't exist. Nurses report to doctors so with that being said I don't think BSN would be the hardest degree in the world. :roflmao: I just think getting in and the standards while being in are held to an intimidating level.

A lot of people I know are in the nursing program at UNLV which is an accelerated program. I've seen one facebook post about the schedule she had and wow I couldn't believe it.

For some reason I can't wrap my head around a quantity over quality type program. If anything is done in a hurry, or rushed or whatever there is no time for learning. No time for learning means you have no idea what you're doing, which means POOR QUALITY which means F you you're fired and all that debt now owns you because no you can't find a job and your schooling was a waste of time.

Btw if anybody is going to try and shoot down my comment about nursing school being the toughest in the world and how bogus it is I had to take a chemistry class this past spring semester for the nursing program I'm planning to apply to and we SKIMMED the surface of other chemistry class. The dreaded O chem class, we learned about reactions but not about the mechanisms of what makes those reactions. I went to tutoring and SI and they told us for our special chem class that med students and other majors requiring chemistry have to learn about certain mechanisms in O chem, not nursing students. Medical students have to learn EVERYTHING even physics. As a nursing student, physics is not a pre-req. Neither is calculus classes for my program. College Algebra is the max we need. Above college algebra is pre-calculus 1 which is what I'm taking now along with microbiology. Med students don't get a chem class that skims the surface of almost every basic field of chemistry like we do. They have to take the MCAT which I've heard is a lot tougher than TEAS or HESI, a lot more expensive to take($300 to reserve a spot?) and med school being a lot tougher to get into. In California, for Physicians assistant, a friend of mine applied to a program and there were 98 spots they could fill and the counselor told her 3,000 apply a semester, it is very tough to get into.

So I disagree with nursing school being the toughest. I'd have to say Neurology school would be the hardest and also the longest(10 years? maybe it was between 4-8 years). A long time ago a physician told me that once when he said he was in medical school, neurology was the hardest the instructors said it was to pass.

I was in a math tutoring center one time and I forgot who it was that told me this but they said when they went into engineering school the first semester of engineering school, the instructor told them "look around you, all around you, you will ALL HATE each other, you will not make friends with each other, you will not have friends, the person on all sides of you will be your enemy, you will all be against each other because engineering is not easy. The slightest miscalculation in your math and measurements and you will be fired either for killing builders or for wasting budget money. If you want to know how many graduate engineering school, it's 40%."

I still think engineering is fascinating and the math you have to learn is ridiculous but physics and aeronautical engineering and mechanical engineering is just fascinating to me. I want to get into it just for the hell of it, not for a career. If I was an RN I'd take the classes required to second major in an engineering field.

Nursing school is not tough through the basics: A&P, Micro, Nutrition, Pharmacology, etc. because most of that is simply memorization. However, when you begin your actual nursing - medical/surgical courses, OB, Pedi, etc. it can get a bit trickier until you learn the art of "thinking like a nurse" and you have grasped an understanding of the basics. There is a method for studying for nursing exams and a way to read nursing exam questions that they should teach you. After you have mastered the art of thinking like a nurse, it gets a bit easier. There is an abundance of time that you will need to spend reading, preparing, writing, and studying as the volume of work that you will be expected to complete is a lot. Just get organized, tackle one thing at a time, stay focused, and do not let yourself fall behind. It is not so much hard as it is a lot of work. You can do it! You got this! Also, congratulations on starting your journey in nursing school; the hard work will be worth it!

it gets harder every semester

You MUST LOVE It. If you don't you won't make it or you'll find it to be the hardest thing ever. But if you do, it will be Great And who knows, you might want to go on and become a doctor !

Specializes in Med-Tele; ED; ICU.
Helenegusa said:
You MUST LOVE It. If you don't you won't make it or you'll find it to be the hardest thing ever. But if you do, it will be Great And who knows, you might want to go on and become a doctor !

You don't need to love it. I certainly didn't love nursing school and I didn't find it to be terribly challenging. It did require consistent effort but it wasn't very hard.

I haven't applied to my CC program for my ADN yet, but I have heard a lot of pretentious sounding talk about it from nursing students before. I mean if it's earth-shatteringly hard and people still get pumped out of programs, then why not become an MD and make 100,000 a year lol.

Ashcash said:
yes it really is harder than you can imagine

Not necessarily. Nursing school is only as hard as you make it. Everyone has a completely different experience from each other. For some it's hard, and for others it was easier than their prereqs. The worst possible thing anyone can do is listen to other people when they say how hard or easy it is. It's school, just get through it.

it is one of the harder degrees but its not hard. Most college degrees are super easy to get, minus some maths and hard sciences.

the busy work was all dumb though, which made it harder

Spadeforce said:
it is one of the harder degrees but its not hard. Most college degrees are super easy to get, minus some maths and hard sciences.

the busy work was all dumb though, which made it harder

This question is not really answer-able. You might have thought it was not hard, but there have been PLENTY of threads started on AN by posters who think nursing school is very hard indeed.

The answer to this question simply depends on the individual in question, as well as the school they attend.

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