I start next Monday, August 19th, and I've been passing the time these last few weeks cleaning and organizing my house, gathering school supplies for myself and the kids, cleaning out closets, etc., making a few freezer meals and stocking up the pantry with dry goods and paper products. I also got the car tuned up, fluids checked, cleaned out and vacuumed, basically anything I can do that will make life a bit easier. Had some date nights with my husband and quality time with the kids, going to the park, movies, just hanging out in the pool, etc. Read some books that have been gathering dust, as I love to read and I know I'm not going to have as much time to read for fun after the program starts. Got together with some friends and had a 'wine' night with my best friend last week. Lots of these to-do's came from advice garnered here on AN, so thanks to all current and former students for your 'life hacks' to help decrease the newbies anxiety and get us geared up for life in nursing school!
I pulled together the last of my books and school materials last week, and I've made myself familiar with the textbooks and other content. I've started the readings for the first week of lecture, skimmed through the lab and clinical manuals as well as prepping for the dreaded math test. We take ours about 3 weeks in, and we have a Dosage Calculations CD and workbook that is our textbook. It has a bunch of modules on it and for this first test we need to work through and complete the first 6 modules. Each module is several sections, called sub-modules, and those sections are further broken down. I completed the first of many sub-modules yesterday, which was 'Basic Math Review', sub-module 'Fractions', it was easy but took about an hour or so. Now that I have an idea of how to complete the modules and their length, I'm going to blow through them this week as much as I can to get them out of the way. That way I can concentrate on all of the other stuff we'll be doing!
How have other new nursing students been preparing for the upcoming semester?
