mandi1013

Yea it can be very overwhelming, I know the feeling all too well. I'm a Junior and this is now my third semester with actual clinicals. But you just need to keep good time managment skills and rest your brain every now and then otherwise you will definately overload and you won't retain any information.

Well first off I wish you the best of luck during your first semester. Some tips, definately make sure you keep up with all your readings. I don't know how your professors are going to give you notes but I know for me I like to make index cards and most of my professors give us our notes via powerpoints. So what I do is I simply go through my powerpoints and take the most important things I need to know and put them on index cards. Also it helps to organize your info on the index cards. So for instance for certain disease processes you may write at the top of the card the disease then under write signs/symptoms, then nursing diagnoses, followed by nursing interventions, and any other information you need to know about the disease like medications. The index cards are also a nice way of outlining information and they're easy to carry around with you where ever you go so you can study. Set up a studying schedule. I had a nurse come into class and talk about studying tips and she explained how its best to study in periods of 3hrs at a time. So for instance you would study for 50mins take a 10min break, study for 50min take another 10min break, and then again study for 50min and then take a few hours to do something else before going back to studying. This is supposed to help so you don't overload with information. Also you will learn that there are many pneumonics that will help you remember a lot of concepts. Most importantly AVOID cramming for a nursing exam its a very bad idea. Hope this helped some. Again the best of luck! :)