Nervous About First Semester

ilovemythreeguys · Jun 3, 2013

Totally nervous too. I start in August. I have never studied before but have gotten wonderful grades. I'm ready though!! Get on YouTube and watch some nursing student vlogs. They're interesting and give some great advice/study tips.

akulahawkRN, ADN, RN, EMT-P · Jun 3, 2013

Welcome to the first semester. You're going to find that it is really going to be a whole lot of learning about the very basics of nursing. Probably the biggest bit of advice that I can give you is that you should do the reading. If your instructor has given you a calendar of some sort that lets you know what you will be reading and when, you should try to stay about a week or so ahead of that. When it comes to doing skills, you should practice as often as possible. These skills that you do in this semester are going to be the ones that form the very foundation of what you do in clinicals from here on out. The main thing is that you should not worry too much about this semester as your instructor should have you on a fairly tight leash. They want to make sure that you are ready to practice at a very basic level in a safe manner. With very few exceptions, you will not be doing anything on your own.

In regards to cramming for exams, I highly recommend not doing it. They types of questions that you get on your exams from here on out will be entirely different from what you had during your prerequisite courses. Those questions were probably most typically the kind of question that simply requires you to regurgitate an answer. Nursing school questions will typically require you to think about the basic sciences and then apply what you know to the question to be able to answer the question correctly. In effect, it's an application type question and you cannot do very well using simple rote memorization methods of study.

I would hazard a guess that pretty much all of us had similar apprehensions about starting nursing school for probably the same reasons. I would also imagine that most of us on this site have probably done well throughout the years and managed to get through nursing school without a whole lot of trouble on the academic end of things.

With that, I wish you good luck!

Tinker88 · Jun 3, 2013

I am really nervous too! I start in August. I think now that I have the summer off (resigned teacher), I have time to prep. When I was working all I had on my mind was teaching and nursing. LOL too much! Anyways...I took micro 5 years ago and A&P 1 year ago, so I need to refreshen my memory. Get down the A&P... They EXPECT you to know it come fall. Your confidence will increase if you review...trust me. I'm studying one section a day. Like one day I reviewed just cells and the next I studied tissues. I make charts, read the text, analyze slides, watch videos on YouTube and Discovery Education, and use one of those coloring books for A&P. I plan to get through my A&P book before August! I feel all the info coming back to me. You got into the program because of what you accomplished and don't forget that! Have faith in yourself! Good luck and keep us posted on how you do! :up:

aml1109 · Jun 3, 2013

I am starting in the fall too. I'm very nervous!! I'm not sure of the "right" way to study. A girl I work with gave me a good idea though and it helped in my anatomy class. When you read the chapters highlight everything that is new to you (the first time you do this it will probably be the entire text!), then go back the next day with a different color highlighter, read what you previously highlighted and rehighlight with the new color the text that you didn't remember or understand. You only go back and read the newley highlighted text. Just skim or even skip over the text you highighted days ago. Then do the same thing the next day with another color. Your book will look so colorful when you're done! But it helped me to learn what I really didn't know and not spend time on stuff I already knew! Hope it helps/made sense!! :woot: