Last semester! Don't feel any smarter??

Mike R, ADN, BSN, RN · Jul 1, 2011

If it makes you feel any better, I've talked to several nurses who tell me the same thing: "When you graduate and get a job, the first thing you need to do is forget everything you learned in Nursing School. The real world is much different."

The fact that you're doing well in your classes means you are smart enough and able to adapt. Once you get out there, you'll learn your routines, sign and symptoms and your 6th sense. I'm sure you'll be fine :)

opticalpopsicle · Jul 1, 2011

OMG me too! Last semester and dumber and more confused than when I started. At my school(local community college) they don't believe in the "hands-on" stuff. Clinicals are just for chatting with the patient to learn all about their life and 12 grandchildren. We may have one lab a semester, we may not. We may touch equipment and SIM man in that one lab, we may not. I'm beginning to think you get what you pay for with education and I should have gone to a private university. Every semester my confidence gets lower and lower. When I try to address this with faculty they tell me things like, "All you need is more confidence.", "You just need to go in and 'act like a nurse'", "You need to be able to read it in the book, then go in and apply that knowledge" But my learning style is to see something done, then to physically do it myself with observation and critique of technique. No matter how hard I try I can't read about something in the book, then go right in and do a technique on a patient cold with no practice. I just simply don't understand why they don't teach in nursing school and I suspect I'm in for a rough ride when i get a job.

pitaya · Jul 1, 2011

I have definitely learned a great deal in nursing school as i'm sure I will in this last semester. However, I don't feel any smarter than the day I started?? I do great in my courses too. Is this normal b/c its making me very nervous that i'm soon going to actually be taking care of people!

I am in my last semester and I feel the same way!!! I have good grades, but I feel like I don't really know anything?! It's quite terrifying. :eek:

Despareux · Jul 1, 2011

I just completed my 3rd quarter and I sort of feel the same way. Before fundamentals I knew nothing at all about nursing responsibility; so I did learn quite a bit, but I still feel like I know nothing.

Nursing school feels like what being immersed in a foreign language and foreign way of thinking and living would feel like. That's the only way I can describe it and that's why I think I feel like I know nothing, still.

healthstar, BSN, RN · Jul 2, 2011

Lol I am graduating soon and I feel like I don't remember much. I mean I have learned a lot and I have earned good grades but I feel like I am not ready to face reality. I feel like I only remember the basics.

countrygonecity · May 25, 2014

I've heard this. I was a LPN first then RN. I still don't feel any smarter at all. Actually I feel cheated cause there were skills that I didn't get to do in nursing school at clinicals. I feel like the ones that RN's that are different for LPN's should have been focused on more latter in the semesters, but they were not.