Peepsimus

Have you been going over your exams with the professor to talk about why you picked the answers you did, develop test strategies for how YOU approach the material, and what you can do to improve? NCLEX style questions throw everyone for a loop at first. There are different strategies, approaches, and tools that you have to learn to answer them correctly. Buying an NCLEX app and doing the Fundamentals questions helped me a lot because I could see rationales and learn how to answer the questions without the pressure of a test.

You won't look obnoxious unless you act obnoxious. There's nothing wrong with having good tools as long as you learn how to use them. I have a Cardio III that my parents got me before I was even admitted to nursing school because all of my friends who are nurses, doctors, and medics said to get a cardio scope if I could. It's tennis ball green, and I absolutely love it. I have a cheap scope (like $20 cheap) that lives in the first aid bag at home, too. The difference in what I can hear is crazy. I use it as an opportunity to ask more experienced people to help me learn to hear small sounds and understand them. If you're not comfortable carrying it around, get a mid-range scope that you can have as backup.

I think we've all been in the situation of having a tough class with an instructor who we can't seem to communicate with or whose teaching just doesn't make sense in our brains. While it's frustrating, this doesn't sound different in expectations than any other nursing class. I had to re-learn how to learn for nursing school. I had to learn new ways of studying because it's a LOT of information that you can't just forget after the test. I've spent time working in academia, and you have some options: 1. If this instructor is that big of a mis-match to your learning style, see if you can drop the class and take it with someone else. 2. Hunt down extra resources - Quizlet, Course Hero, YouTube lectures, etc. Even if your particular course at your school isn't on there, the same course somewhere else will be. These are helpful, free, easy resources. 3. Call or email the nursing department at your school and talk to someone about what resources they can provide to help you learn studying and test taking strategies specifically for nursing school. In-person tutorials, a video, whatever. Your school wants you to succeed, and there may be really helpful things you don't know about until you've asked. Sometimes, professors aren't very aware of the resources offered. There's a series of weed out classes leading up to program admission, and they only get harder once you're in. You have to be able to learn this way because you are responsible for the bulk of the material on your own in other nursing classes - even when the professor is great. When I took patho, the professor might spend 45 seconds on a condition. It was my job to go read through MedScape and Mayo Clinic and the book so I could create a thorough concept map that let me really understand it and what to do for it. If you're not already, really do spend the 3 hours out of class weekly studying for every credit hour you take.

The best advice I got on this was to have an open mind for clinicals, and once you're in there and enjoying an area, ask your preceptor to work with a challenging or complex patient so you get a fuller picture of what working there is like. Your mom just wants the best for you and doesn't understand the process. Reassure her that you have to do continuing education anyway and always have the ability to add more certifications and explore different specialties. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to (nurses, doctors, etc.) who were sure they wanted to do one thing and fell in love with something unexpected as they rotated through clinical settings. I'm pretty sure it's the only way anyone winds up in urology.

I'm still a student (2nd career), am seriously considering ED, and was talking to a friend who's been a paramedic forever. He asked if I'd like to ride a shift or two between semesters to understand what happens before people get to the hospital. Heck yes I wanted to do that. I go, his guys are showing me the stuff in the ambulance and talking through how they work. They show me how I can help prep supplies when we pick people up and how to stay out of the way. Awesome. I am READY for this and am determined to not do something stupid. We go on a call where the cops have a driver that's not doing well and was swerving. They can't find any drugs, but he's gray and clammy, pupils blown, limbs not cooperating, and has been awake after getting off work for over 14 hours. Off we go to the hospital. I help do the vitals and assemble the IV kit perfectly. The medic reaches, and it's already there. I am feeling pretty proud of myself. He's starting an IV as we drive through bumpy construction and asks for gauze. I see no little gauze packets anywhere. We go over a big bump, his finger slips off of something, and suddenly blood is going everywhere. The medic gives a head jerk and I see a giant pack that says gauze on the front, rip it open, and unfurl something that could be a maxi pad for an elephant. He takes it gamely and shoots me a look. After we finish taking the guy to the ED, I ask about where the right gauze is. Literally, it filled the entire shelf beneath the one where I found the giant gauze. An ocean of 2x2 squares at the ready.

Do some research and apply to more schools. Some community college programs give better training and have smaller class sizes than prestigious universities in the same city. There are a lot of paths to being a nurse, including LVN to RN to BSN bridge programs. If your school's program is one where only 15% of students who apply get in, and you're not in that 15%, that doesn't make your path to nursing any less good or valid. There are also a lot of other health professions whose admissions aren't so combative.

Micro was much easier than I expected it to be, based on people whining about it. There's a lot of memorization that's largely structured the same way. The earlier you have a system in place to get that in your head, the better off you'll be. For each organism, you have to know what illnesses it causes, its virulence factors, if it has special diagnostic criteria, how it's treated, etc. I found that I was familiar with a lot of the material but hadn't had to put it all together before. Some of the Crash Course videos for chem and bio can be helpful to refresh your memory if it's been a while since you thought about the inner workings of cells.

The Alegria Women's Keli Professional Shoe is stupid comfortable. Amazon carries it for almost half off at ~$65. When they arrived, I had been on my feet all day in running shoes at my current job and tried them on and was amazed at the difference. The insoles are replaceable for around $30 I think, so you can bring back the magic when they start to wear down without having to replace the whole shoe. Supplies and organization are kind of a personal preference thing. I'm a color-coder and love my big pack of Stabilo Point 88 fine felt tip pens. I color code my notecards, draw diagrams, etc. all the time. I also took some time to figure out writing instruments that minimize hand fatigue for me, esp. since writing by hand really helps things stick in my brain. Three hour lectures is a long time to write. I have the Scanner Pro app on my phone and use it to scan my written notes for review anywhere. I like the NCLEX RN Mastery app (free trial, paid version that they send you discount emails for when you don't buy it before the trial expires). It's robust and easy to use, and I've been playing with it even before nursing school to get a feel for questions and how they want us to think. I also have a North Face backpack I love. So comfy with lots of nice organizing details like a fuzzy padded pouch for sunglasses and one for electronics. I absolutely love my cardio scope. The cheap one recommended for the program and available at the bookstore left me hearing nothing but tubes rubbing together. All my nurse/doctor/medic friends told me to get a cardio if I could afford it, and my parents got it as a Christmas present. They're under $200 on Amazon. I love being able to hear everything, but it's definitely not necessary. Spend more than $20, though. For real - healthy snacks and water. If you can swing a cooking or meal prep day on the weekend (even just to cut up the veggies and plan menus), it makes it easy to eat well and take care of yourself. There are always raw almonds and a couple of Lara or Kind bars in my backpack, and I try to snack on raw fruits/veggies with some kind of protein like apples and almond butter or celery and hummus. Try to moderate your caffeine intake so you don't screw up your sleep and crash midday in a nasty cycle. If you aren't taking care of yourself, you can't take care of other people.

Some hospitals allow you to work as a patient care tech (PCT) once you've completed the Essentials of Nursing Practice (or whatever it's called at your school). It's basically being a CNA, but the position is reserved for nursing students. Hours aren't guaranteed, and you do a variety of jobs in all areas of the hospital. I'd ask at the educational office at local hospitals. I'm in Georgia, where it pays ~$12/hr, but about a decade ago, a friend did it in Texas and earned around $15/hr.

Are you an undergrad or a post-bacc student? I'm post-bacc and came in with a 3.25 from UT Austin, did a 3.75 on prereqs at Armstrong (stats, A&P I-II, micro), and got a 91 on the HESI, but I took it in the break between A&P semesters, so there were things I didn't know on there. If you show up and are willing to work, professors are happy to help you succeed and figure out how to best approach studying and the material.

If I think I might want to reference my notes later or if it was just crazy interesting, I keep the spiral notebooks and textbook. From my first undergrad, there are still cognitive neurobiology notes and books that I've referenced in A&P and would definitely be useful if I wind up working in any capacity with neuro or the elderly or peds. I'm keeping A&P notes because they're my rewritten and illustrated notes withe the mnemonics and notes about which page of the book has the best diagram of the body part. I'm keeping my nursing textbooks. I'm not keeping the binders of printed out slides once I'm finished with everything. It's a couple of shelves on the bookcase, and not a big deal to have them on hand. One of my best friends is a hospitalist pediatrician, and she regularly pulls out textbooks to either reference something, check her knowledge while diagnosing something weird, or use them to explain something to parents.

Learning to ask why someone is doing something without sounding like you're challenging their choice is one of the most useful job skills on the planet. I spent a decade in management before changing careers into nursing. I've never ever gotten mad at someone for wanting to know why or how or for asking me to check how they were doing something to see if it could be improved. I've fired people for not asking questions when they should have and causing giant problems. It's great you have such supportive people to work with!

I had a similar conversation with one of my professors recently, but she had a really different opinion than your professor. She teaches PA classes as well and urged me to stay on my track for the following reasons: 1. The world needs smart nurses with curious, medically-geared minds as part of the patient care team, whether it's an office or hospital environment. Making smart people feel like they're wasting their talent by not pursing an MD is a disservice to everyone. They fill different roles, are better suited to different personalities, and have different approaches to patient care. It's crap to make people feel like they're failing because they choose the path that suits the way they want to work and live and care for people instead of the more prestigious one. 2. DNP programs definitely need more medical rigor in them and less theory. Nurses want it. It would help provide even better patient outcomes and give NPs skills they need to do their jobs well. If we want the programs to shift some of the focus and cut out diploma mill options, we need nurses who will drive the change and raise the standards and push for improvements instead of just complaining that the standard should be higher. 3. Knowledgeable and experienced NPs help balance the primary care workload, manage patient education doctors aren't given time to do, and bridge significant gaps in healthcare. While some doctors are angry and vocal about being anti-NP, a lot of them benefit daily from working with NPs and have a lot of gratitude for the role they play. Don't feel like you have to choose between the kind of work you want to do and being respected in your workplace. I'm not sure how valid these are in practice, but they stand up to logic and anecdotal conversations I've had with doctor and nurse friends. The one thing everyone seems to agree on is that the role is shifting and that the education needs to shift with it.

I have ALL of the anxiety disorders, and I'm on an antidepressant and Xanax, too. It overwhelmed me sometimes in my first BA and in my first career. Cognitive behavioral therapy can help a LOT, giving you tools that you can use in the moment and in order to reduce some of the things that might trigger panic attacks. It helped me learn to have productive preparatory sessions where I could think through what I was scared of and make plans or solutions, so I knew what to do if something happened. 90%+ of the time, nothing happens, partially because of the planning. The other thing I wish I'd done years ago was to actually sit down and do the math to figure out how much caffeine I was taking in daily. It was a LOT more than I thought, and bringing it down to safe levels has made the most enormous difference in reducing anxiety, improving quality and quantity of sleep, and in my overall happiness. Maybe use some time this semester to get adjusted to your meds, learn some skills for managing your condition, and establishing some sustainable healthy habits. I was so afraid that slowing down a little would be like face planting into failure. It's not. I'm still crazy productive, but I feel a lot better and my life is definitely better.