New Nursing Student

ThatBigGuy · Jun 3, 2014

1. READ READ READ. There is so much material that even the world's best instructor can't teach it to you in the limited amount of class time. My Mother/Baby textbook is 1947 pages long. My Pharm textbook is almost 1500 pages long. Those were one semester courses in my program. There's not enough time for the professor to cover all the material in lecture.

2. Do NCLEX questions early and often. Get an NCLEX study book and do lots of questions. You won't do very well at first, but over the course of your schooling, you'll develop a familiarity to the question styles. This will help alleviate testing anxiety because you've been doing NCLEX questions for the previous two years. It will also help give you some "ah-HA!" moments when you connect a lecture point with a practical application.

3. Get to know your professors. Nursing instructors are different from other college professors because teaching is usually a second career for them. They were out in the world, and have a more understanding and compassionate view of students than most other career professors do.

4. READ READ READ. I'm not kidding. You simply cannot learn enough from lectures and pass nursing school, much less the NCLEX.

kdpatula · Jun 3, 2014

Thank You so much for the great advice!! @thatbigguy!! I am really nervous because I have no idea what to expect but I just want to do the best I can do and be able to help my classmates as much as possible :)

Ecl09 · Jun 3, 2014

Time management was absolutely key for me. I lived by my outlook calendar -- scheduling daily study time, group reviews, due dates, etc. Best of luck! You're going to do great!

kdpatula · Jun 3, 2014

Thank you so much for responding @Ecl09! I know this may be a dumb question but do you have any advice on how to stay healthy and fit throughout school, I do not want to let myself go!

Ecl09 · Jun 3, 2014

Making time for regular exercise is a great idea! I would definitely be sure to include that in your weekly schedule. Things can get pretty hectic during the semester -- especially if you are also working part time -- so I would say a feasible goal is to workout 3 times a week. Try setting aside 30-45 minutes for each workout. For me, the biggest challenge with this was keeping my motivation up to actually DO the workout. So I started focusing on activities that I naturally enjoy anyway (swimming, biking, tennis, etc.). This made me WANT to workout -- unlike the insanity dvd's I had been trying.

I hope that helps!