Nursing school is SO hard-that's all I hear

[veronica123]

I'm starting the LPN program in August and all I keep hearing is that nursing school is extremely hard. It must be doable....cause people do graduate. But, is it as hard as they say? Hearing that scares me to death...and makes me not even want to go. Please give me some insight to what it's really like...Thank you.

[VieraGrl1030]

bingo! remember that people like to complain and whine and the forums on a site like allnurses are as good a place as any to do that. if everything in our lives were easy we'd all be millionaires and living on easy street, don't you think?

what nursing school is going to be like is learning a whole lot of things that you've never been exposed to before. so, it won't exactly be like in your childhood school years where each year of english, math and social studies built upon what you learned the year before. some things you will recognize as being kind of common sense stuff, but a good deal of it will be all brand new. learning all that "new" stuff in a short period of time is what people mistaken say is what makes nursing school "difficult". you prepare and train yourself up for this by learning about study and memorization techniques to help you make the best use of your time. as you work with all kinds of patients in your clinicals and later in real practice, all the concepts from the books start to gel together and somewhere down the road it will all start to make sense. if others have done it, so can you.

http://go.dbcc.edu/hhps/nursing/study_skills.html - study skills for the nursing student from daytona beach community college nursing department with some good advice.

http://go.dbcc.edu/hhps/nursing/test_taking_skills.html - test taking skills also from daytona beach community college nursing department. a couple of sample questions and how to choose the correct answer for these application type questions.

http://www.accd.edu/sac/history/keller/accditg/ssindex.htm - strategies for success, an online primer and tutorial on how to study for students from the alamo community college. this is a pretty extensive resource with links on the right side of the page to click into the following subjects: learning styles, note taking, memory techniques, time management, overcoming procrastination, sq3r (a method for getting the most out of reading your textbooks), study tips, critical thinking, preparing for tests, and oral presentations. also, take a look at the faq's (frequently asked questions)

http://www.efn.org/~nurses/ - this is a website maintained by the nursing students at lane community college in eugene, oregon. for study and learning tips specific to nursing students click on "tips for learning" at the left side of this home page.

http://www.ucc.vt.edu/stdysk/checklis.html - this is a study skill checklist for you to go through and inventory your study habits from virginia polytechnic institute and state university. at the bottom of the form is the link to "study skills self-help information" which is all kinds of information to help you with areas you were weak on in the checklist. if you want to bypass the checklist and just go into the information section, go to this link http://www.ucc.vt.edu/stdysk/stdyhlp.html

why wasn't i aware of this 4 years ago!!!? atleast i got this info before starting nursing school. sutdy skills have always been my sore spot, because i never had to study and i do now and i dont know how to do it. these links have been favorited... thanks so much for taking the time to post them for people like me.