Need your opinion

The rule of thumb is that for every one hour of class time, plan on 1-3 hours of studying.

1. You have to actually read the text book and assigned readings. Don't expect to get by on Powerpoint alone, especially if you care about good grades. It is best to read the book first, then go to lecture, then review the book and Powerpoints.

2. You have to take notes on your reading and do extra work like making flash cards, drawing diagrams, etc., to help you master and remember the material.

3. Some classes will require writing papers, care plans, etc., which can be quite time-consuming.

4. Extra study time before exams.

5. Study group time if you join a group

As for which classes are hard, that depends on the person.

I'd go a little different direction than what FullGlass said.

How many hours you need to study depends completely on how you learn. Some people do nothing but study, other people only used their books as decoration on a bookshelf.

You need to figure out what works for you. If you can't learn by reading, you're accomplishing nothing but wasting valuable time reading that book. Why do something that you know isn't going to work? If you need a presentation, then taking notes is probably only going to distract you and you'd learn best by listening. If you learn by application, then you want to look at other resources like practice tests and treat them as an open book test. Focus on what works, ignore what doesn't. For me, I need to be presented, and then I need to apply it. As long as I have that combination, it's rare that I ever have to take a note or open the book. I learn from youtube videos (from reliable accounts) and just how that new thing applies to what I already knew.

I'd avoid scheduled studying. Study until you feel confident with the information, then stop for the night. Go have a drink and watch some TV.

That out of the way:

Your class setup is either going to make this incredibly easy or the hardest thing ever... It depends on how in sync your teachers are. If it's lined up to where you're learning about assessing lungs in your assessment class, while pathophysiology is touching on the basics of COPD, and your essentials is teaching you the nursing application to COPD patients, and your health promotion class is teaching you about how to relieve symptoms of breathing problems and how to prevent more serious breathing problems, it's going to be a pretty easy semester as long as you just stay calm and study in whatever way is most efficient to you. If you learn by application, like I luckily do, a setup like that is the dream, because you can seriously instantly apply everything to something. You're going to keep hearing about the nursing process, it's really just a general 5 step process to problem solving. Your 4 classes are the entire process applied to nursing, conveniently in order the way you listed them. If it's like this, I'd give the difficulty of the entire semester, all 4 classes combined a 2 if application is your strong point, or a 3 if it isn't.

But if your assessment class is teaching skin assessment, while patho is teaching diabetes, and essentials is teaching you about pain, while health promotion is teaching you about preventing infections, it's going to be very noticeably harder. But then it all starts coming together by 2nd semester. But if you have this mess, I'd say a 4 or 5, but then calming down later in the semester and noticeably easier next semester.