my personal advice to the students currently in school aka future nurses...

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My personal advice to the future nurses in school...make sure when u are studying for exams you are reading to understand and NOT cramming b/c when u read to understand....it stays in your LT memory instead for cramming a night before the test and it goes away from your brain before 24 hrs....if u keep on reading...and reading...when it comes time to take the nclex the content review will be brief and you wont be as stressed out when taking the nclex....

so remember read to understand which will benefit u when taking the nclex down the road.....good luck.

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Specializes in Obstetrics.

Agree. Study like you're reading a story. Once I started studying like that, it made more sense.

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Great advice! I completely agree, you have to understand the material and not just memorize for an exam.

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I agree as well!

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Fantastic advice! This should be a habit with any classes imo. It's a hard habit to break but, once you get it down it sure makes classes easier.

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True, that. In nursing, you need to learn it all and carry it around in your head. The material from fundamentals or growth & development or whatever doesn't go away.

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Hi Passredskins,

That is some great advice. This past year in the LPN program I had a bad habit of cramming all day the day before an exam. I was taking two additional classes on top of working full-time and found it very difficult to fit studying into my busy schedule.

I have made a promise to myself that starting in Sept, during my second year of the LPN program, I am going to study at least one to two hours a night on the days that I don't have clinical or class. I'll have two full days of clinical and one lecture day, each from 3-10. Luckily I will not be taking any additional classes next year, so I will have more time to be able to focus on the Fundamentals class.

Currently I am not taking any classes so I plan on brushing up on my Fundamentals skills. I'm also gonna start studying the Saunders NCLEX-PN exam review, as well as the Kaplan one. I start Micro in July, so then I'll be focusing solely on that. I have the month of August off which will give me another month to brush up on Fundamentals.

This is my plan heading into the second year of Fundamentals. I just hope I can stick with it!

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Oh yeah, I meant Med/Surg, not Fundamentals.

@Streamline...You are so right...That material does not go away! I was doing some practice questions from my Saunders book and saw some related to Growth and Development, Piaget I believe. Unfortunately for me though, G&D is one class that I put on the back burner and neglected to really study for. Consequently, I did not get the grade that I know I'm capable of achieving. I still have the book, so I plan on going through that again this summer. I just wish that I had sacrificed sleep this past year so that I could have studied more.

Anyways, I plan on putting in 100% effort this coming year because I really want this!

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I believe that this advice is good and I will carry it forward.

I am starting the RN program, again, but as a first year student.

I was in the accelerated program in January; it was out of this world tough. Then the unthinkable happened; my twin sister died, totally Unexpected. I completely shut down, was unable to think, concentrate and sometimes all I could do is spend the day crying.

I'm doing a little better now but it's still only been less than 4 months and the pain is still unbearable as I am still not ready to even say she's 'not here.'

I really am a good student; I study for hours and hours but going forward, I am going to try to be better to myself and study hard, yes, but not to the point where I punish myself.

Thanks for this advice; the reading like it's a 'story' really makes sense.

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Agree. Study like you're reading a story. Once I started studying like that, it made more sense.

Isn't this how everyone reads, all the time?

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