Sendana

I can see this situation between two dudes. Guy 1: "HEY, WHAT THE *** IS YOUR PROBLEM?" Guy 2: "Dude, you suck. Get away from me." Guy 1: "You gotta problem with me? Do we need to take this outside, bro?" Guy 2: "Let's go, chump." POW BAM SMASH SNORK KICK KABLOOIE KAMEHAMEHA CHOKE STRANGLE WWE MOVES ***one week later*** Guy 1: "Yo dude, we playin' Halo tonight?" Guy 2: "Hells yeah! I'm bringin' the beer, you bring the stogies." *fist bump* *playing Halo* Guy 1: "Man, that one chick in school is a babe." Guy 2: "You know it. Let's hit on her and her friends tomorrow." Guy 1: "We're there, dude." *celebratory stand-up urination*

Seriously, who cares what she thinks? She might have an attitude problem, or be intimidated by you, or she might just not care to be friends with you. It doesn't matter either way. You're not there to impress her, or please her. She has no bearing on your life. I had the same issue a year or so back, and the funny thing is, when I made it clear I didn't care, she got even more aloof and snooty. Some people's kids, eh?

Bedmaking: the CORE of nursing practice. LOL.

If my husband is any indication, breasts remain fascinating basically forever. I'm waiting until gravity takes its toll to see if that holds true.

Have you ever heard of James Herriot's All Creature's Great and Small? It's about a country vet in England. He talks about his first months out of school- his book learning versus his practical learning. It's a funny, charming book, and he talks very much about his feelings of inadequacy. All of that book learning is no substitute for practical experience. He finds himself in many embarrassing situations brought about by a combination of his inexperience and a hostile clientele. Read it before you start class. It's like eight bucks at B&N. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll realize that being new isn't the end of the world.

A few of my classmates have found that propanolol is the answer. I'm not being flippant. Test anxiety in nursing school can ruin students. We have a couple on benzos and several on propanolol for tests. The day before a test, if at all possible, I get in an extremely hard workout and try to go to bed early. That helps.

20+ hours per week studying.

If you're really hardcore, brush up on your A&P. But, really, there's not much you can do to prepare for a program- no matter how much knowledge you accumulate over the summer, they're going to bury you in work that you can't do until you actually start the program. Enjoy your free time while you have it.

Self-grading? Uh, of course people without any integrity are going to take advantage of that. Maybe that's what the instructor wants. Don't be a squealer, though. Cheaters always hang themselves once they get enough rope. If you say anything about it, say it directly to the person you saw cheating, and advise her to turn herself in. She'll think you're a meddling, but you'll be right.

I took a class called Critical Thinking, and it was incredible. I kept the textbook and still read it quite frequently. We covered formal logic, truth tables, logical fallacies, deductive and inductive reasoning, and other topics. It was one of the best classes I've ever taken in college. I think it made me a more logical, less emotional reasoner and, believe it or not, I've been able to use that to my advantage when talking with patients (and instructors, and other nurses...you wouldn't believe how many people simply do not know how to react to a reasoned, as opposed to an emotional, argument). Your mileage may vary at your school, of course.

The same things that make an RN-BSN stand out. Hard work, dedication, and excellent technical skills. Degrees don't make the nurse, the nurse makes the degree (and that includes advanced degrees).

No, it is not, but some people have no choice. The people who can actually pull of a job, family, AND nursing school at the same time deserve a lot more respect than they usually get. I go to school with two women and a man in that situation, and I am truly in awe not only of their dedication to nursing, but to their spouses and children.

This is an excellent point. Quoted for emphasis. Another is that, if the material presented in a SoN is claimed to stand on its own merits, grade deflation should not be necessary. In other words, if the faculty is seriously claiming that the material is difficult enough, grade deflation should not be a factor in keeping the number of A's and B-pluses to the students who really work for them.

[citation needed]

If I'm ever a nurse educator, I plan on addressing the stupendous idiocy of these grade deflation policies I keep seeing in schools of nursing.

You'll notice I didn't decry the format of the questions, or their purpose, just offered a reason for why they are so convoluted. I've also seen questions that are simply incoherent; over the past couple of years, my faculty has thrown out probably five dozen or so questions that they thought were stupid beyond belief, even though they were "official" NCLEX-style questions supposedly written by experts. My experience with actual patients has been that the vast majority are so uneducated about their bodies and health-related matters that they don't know what they don't know. Trying to extract "pertinent information" from them beyond vague reports of symptoms is like asking a blind person to describe the color blue. That's fine, I suppose, because it's our job to interpret those symptoms, but if you're arguing that NCLEX-style questions represent anything resembling the reality of patient interaction, you are wrong (but probably not in a bad way). Talking to or assessing an actual patient is far more complicated and difficult than answering an NCLEX-style question.

After it's over, you'll be looking forward to Med/Surg again. Maternity/Pediatrics was the most godawful experience I've ever had in school. The instructors were great, but if you don't like kids or preggos, it's a rough ride. The most helpful advice I can think of giving is to not regard it as "med surg for pregnant women and children." There's a lot of politically correct sociological nonsense that goes into the theories of maternity and pediatric (especially pediatric) nursing; at times I couldn't tell if I was in nursing school or daycare. The outdated and hilarious "theories" of Erikson, Piaget, and others were harped upon daily as if they were gospel. Sorry, that's overly negative. It's like anything else in nursing school, really. Study hard and do the best job you can at all times. I did that and toward the end I actually started not hating kids so much (preggos, on the other hand...).

The poster above me is correct in stating that nursing school questions are presented that way in order to help prepare you for NCLEX. The better question is probably why NCLEX questions are so convoluted. I believe the answer to that is probably that NCLEX is written by a gaggle of overeducated Ivory Tower-dwelling knuckleheads with fancy degrees. Also, NCLEX (like nursing school), is structured to make it easy for people to fail. The wordiness of the questions increases how hard you have to work to extract pertinent information from them, thus making them more difficult to answer, no matter how well you know the material.

Whoever told you that was joking with you.

My nursing courses are much more difficult than my prerequisite courses.

No waiting lists, exceptional faculty, small class sizes, and a lot of one-on-one time with my professors is what I get out of my BSN program at a private university. Yes, it is more expensive. Sometimes you get what you pay for. I transferred after a year at a largish public university, where I felt like, and was treated like, a head of cattle.

Calcium-channel blockers reduce cardiac output my reducing myocardial contractility, right? I would question that order in a patient with heart failure. What about diet as tolerated? Maybe he should be on fluid restriction.

The truth is that some people read very little and do okay, and some people, like me, read a lot and do okay. Some books come with study guides, and the people who don't want to read such long chapters use them. I never have, though. Some people outline their chapters. (I should note I'm speaking from my experience in my own classes). I've had people come to me for study advice, only to find that my methods won't work for them at all, and I've gone to people for study advice and experienced the same thing. In my program, it's always been the case that every page in every chapter is fair game for a test, whether it's mentioned in class or not. That includes charts, tables, graphs, tiny factoids at the bottom of page, etc. This can be difficult with a verbose textbook. Ultimately, what has happened is that every person has had to find what works for herself. There's really no one-size-fits-all method. The two things that I have found which help me the most are taking detailed chapter notes while reading, and taking the time to pause, close my eyes, and mentally review concepts and processes I have just read. This is key for me, because nursing school tests do not contain many comprehension-only questions; you must apply the information you have learned, and for that, one needs to be able to move it around in one's mind and see it from multiple angles. Hmm...that probably doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's how I operate, and it's the only way I can think of to explain it. You will understand more after you take a few tests in nursing school. They are quite different from the tests in other classes.

I've seen it done and managed it myself one semester (the first), but it doesn't help clinical performance. At least, it didn't help my clinical performance. Props to you for having high standards, though.

No waiting list and a small class size. For me it was an issue of practicality: wait two years to go to school, or pay more and go to school immediately. I chose the latter.