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?

Thanks for your replies! Luckily, I don't have to work, and I live at home with my parents. Maybe that will make it easier for me. What I'm hearing is, it is hard, but the difficulty truly depends on each individual and how you learn. Thank you again for the replies! Hopefully I can stop stressing for at least a couple weeks. :sarcastic:

Specializes in NICU, Trauma, Oncology.
KThurmond said:
If you don't have to work it will help with large homework assignments and studying. My school used Prep U and that took a awhile

PrepU is a great resource. We had access first semester it was awesome. Then the school didn't renew the service.

Specializes in NICU, Trauma, Oncology.
Heathermaizey said:
Actually, I heard its in the Guiness Book of World Records that the BSN is the hardest degree. I need to confirm that myself though.

It is what you make it. You are learning to think differently. If you do the work, it's not that hard. If you are one that slacks off, it is going to be harder. Just come to class prepared, take good notes, ask questions.

I'm also terrible at the SATA questions. I always get all the math right. What makes it hard is you are going to take a multiple choice test and each question will have 4 right answers. Your job is to pick the "most right" answer. It can get tricky. And you will be sitting there saying to yourself, but my answer is right too!! And it probably is, it's just not the most right answer.

Welcome to nursing school where everything is gray, not black and white, like your prereqs were.

Guinness book of world records? That's a little ridiculous. I went to a tech school for part of my first undergrad degree. Most of my classmates are legit rocket scientists (engineers, etc, that actually launch rockets and work with nasa). Nursing is hard. It is a LOT of material. It is training yourself how to think. However, I highly doubt hardest degree to obtain. Maybe the degree that a large majority want to obtain but only a small percentage actually do.

Specializes in Med-Tele; ED; ICU.
Heathermaizey said:
Actually, I heard its in the Guiness Book of World Records that the BSN is the hardest degree.

That's ridiculous... for many reasons, not the least of which is the lack of any standardized definition of "hard."

Specializes in ICU Stepdown.
sarose611 said:
Yes. A recent study reported it was the most difficult degree to obtain.

That is clearly a myth

Specializes in Med-Tele; ED; ICU.
sarose611 said:
A recent study reported it was the most difficult degree to obtain.

I would love to read this study. Could please share the author, title, or publication?

Here is a snopes article to clear up the claim that nursing is the hardest degree:

What is the Toughest College Degree? : snopes.com

Specializes in Med-Tele; ED; ICU.
TheAtomicStig_702 said:
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%."

As a degreed engineer, that sounds absurd to me. Much of engineering studies require the students to work as teams because (a) real-world projects are generally much too large and complex to be done by an individual, and (b) generally require multidisciplinary input.

"You will all be against each other because engineering is not easy?" Doesn't that sound apocryphal to you? Why would the rigor of something set people against each other? In fact, it would tend to be just the opposite. Teams prevail where individuals fail.

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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.

This makes me chuckle. The effort required to learn engineering is enormous and, like nursing, is just beginning with the completion of the formal education.

I will say with supreme conviction, though, that engineering was orders of magnitude more difficult and rigorous an academic discipline than was nursing. That's not to cast aspersions on nursing at all but simply an observation from someone who has done them both.

KindaBack said:
As a degreed engineer, that sounds absurd to me. Much of engineering studies require the students to work as teams because (a) real-world projects are generally much too large and complex to be done by an individual, and (b) generally require multidisciplinary input.

"You will all be against each other because engineering is not easy?" Doesn't that sound apocryphal to you? Why would the rigor of something set people against each other? In fact, it would tend to be just the opposite. Teams prevail where individuals fail.

This makes me chuckle. The effort required to learn engineering is enormous and, like nursing, is just beginning with the completion of the formal education.

I will say with supreme conviction, though, that engineering was orders of magnitude more difficult and rigorous an academic discipline than was nursing. That's not to cast aspersions on nursing at all but simply an observation from someone who has done them both.

I agree why would an instructor say something like that? Engineering students I knew worked in teams but I only knew engineers that worked on robotics projects and they competed against other schools.

It was an elderly guy who is a math tutor at my school that studied chemical engineering in mid to late 70s. He told me that. It's what he said..

KindaBack said:
As a degreed engineer, that sounds absurd to me. Much of engineering studies require the students to work as teams because (a) real-world projects are generally much too large and complex to be done by an individual, and (b) generally require multidisciplinary input.

"You will all be against each other because engineering is not easy?" Doesn't that sound apocryphal to you? Why would the rigor of something set people against each other? In fact, it would tend to be just the opposite. Teams prevail where individuals fail.

This makes me chuckle. The effort required to learn engineering is enormous and, like nursing, is just beginning with the completion of the formal education.

I will say with supreme conviction, though, that engineering was orders of magnitude more difficult and rigorous an academic discipline than was nursing. That's not to cast aspersions on nursing at all but simply an observation from someone who has done them both.

I need to save this post and paste it every time someone trots out the "nursing is the hardest major" tripe. ?

Completely ridiculous. I spent the whole time wishing nursing school was harder.

baleen said:
Completely ridiculous. I spent the whole time wishing nursing school was harder.

Lol I hope you're being serious :laugh:

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