So how different is nursing school?

tkm2005 · Jul 18, 2011

The biggest difference for me was not being able to "memorize" everything I needed to know. Nursing school is all about applying what you know to different situations.

My best advice, take it one day at a time and focus on the here and now. Don't get too far ahead of yourself or you will get completely overwhelmed.

I'm starting my second year of my ADN program August 16th so it is possible to be successful :) Look at all the great nurses who come before us.

Cherish every minute of your education, you've earned it! :) Remember there are hundreds of people on waiting lists all over the USA who would kill to have a spot in any program, anywhere. Work hard, stay focused, and remember your initial goal. When it gets tough, remember the excitement you felt the day you got your acceptance letter.

Best of luck to you. :)

ImThatGuy, BSN, RN · Jul 19, 2011

Majoring in nursing is different in the sense that A) there are rotations requiring silly outfits to take part in and B) everybody gripes about how much harder nursing is than (insert) major.

The courses are, in MY opinion, much easier than the sciences (my first degree) and somewhat more difficult than the social studies (history, psychology, etc. [my first degree's minor]). Sure, there isn't much writing, but if you went into the major knowing absolutely nothing about any of it then I can see how there'd be a lot of new words and material to absorb. None of it seems to all that foundational beyond physiology. Getting a sound grasp of pathophysiology and pharmacology's drug classes/MOA's will help very much as well.

The absolute prerequisite, in MY opinion, is physiology. If you really have that down, in the sense of whatever your program will require as a prerequisite course, then you'll do fine. The kids in MY cohort that either did poorly or whizzed through with an A yet didn't retain anything, both, have noticeable difficulties in this major, from MY observations.

NSGstudent12 · Jul 19, 2011

It depends on the school you go to if it's harder or not. Nursing school has a different kind of test taking and questions so it can prepare you for NCLEX. Like someone said before, you can't just memorize like you can in your pre-reqs. Questions are not point blank with right answers. It has 4 answers that could all be right. Alot of ppl in my class work part time and it's fine. They usually work weekends.

Streamline2010 · Jul 19, 2011

I disagree with "Guy" and I disagree with the people that say there isn't a lot of memorization. The amount of memorization and reading compared to my science classes is huge. I'd love to swap RN for physics, or P-chem or whatever. In those classes I had instructors who wanted students to learn, wanted them to pass the class. There was a good-enough level, and that remained consistent, and you usually had a clear picture of what would be included in the test questions, and the students were friendly towards other students. Not a toxic workplace, in other words.

Nursing school: Toxic. Hostile. Sneaky. Good-enough is never good enough. They must limit the success, not foster it, enable it, and nurture it. For RN, you can't look it up in a book. You have to remember a whale of a lot of material that you carry around in your head to be able to pass RN course tests or perform assessments or write care plans on the fly. The major problem I have had w/ RN courses is that there is a massive, massive amount of very fine print, very detailed reading to do, each and every day and night, and all day Saturday and Sunday, and try as I may, I still can't do it all b/c I am trapped in lectures literally 18-30 actual hours per week, have clinicals and sim labs going on concurrently, and all of those clinicals/sims have huge paperwork due, and there just IS NOT ENOUGH TIME to study all of it as thoroughly as it needs to be studied, if one is a career changer looking at medicine for the first time. Now, a college program, especially a 4-year, might be better run and more traditionally structured, so that the student is not perpetually overloaded and perpetually shortcutting and perpetually cramming instead of thoroughly studying. Moral: Always investigate just exactly how the program is structured and sequenced, and make sure that the pace of it is reasonable and customary. I was an A/B student in engineering, comp sci, CMIS, and accounting/business. I have never, ever, put in so many hours for so low of a grade as I have in this diploma RN program. My program produces C students mostly. There are a few Bs. The only As are return students who've attempted RN someplace before and are now repeating Nurse1 and Nurse2, or are experienced LPNs who are going to RN.

Another interesting thing I found out about my school is that every time they offer a test, they strive to make the questions more difficult. We recently had 50% of the class fail Exam I, and fully 75%-80% failed Exam II! On one of those exams, there were 2 questions that 100% of the class answered correctly. And the school culled those from the test bank for the makeup exam, and also from the test banks for next year's exams, saying those were too easy b/c 100% got them right. I was told that this particular school aims to use questions that only 85% of the students pass, and they keep cutting the "easy" questions. It's really unfair, imo. Instead of removing those questions, I think they should be thinking "Wonderful! What did that instructor do to get the message through to 100% of the class?" but nursing (and all of medicine) seems to have a hidden agenda of also limiting the number of new grads, especially if the hiring numbers are down due to nobody's hiring. If you have a local market that will hire 25 new grads and you produce 60, you have a surplus of 35 that you can't place, and the school would rather say "We placed 100% of our grads" (or 85%) instead of say "we were unable to place a lot of our grads this year." Moral: Always look at the seamy underbelly of any academic program, not just the information that the school wants you know. Listen to the negative people. If you hear a pattern of gripes and discontent over and over, it might be a bad program to commit to if you want to succeed and also have a high GPA to be eligible for grad school work.

I'm in an "integrated curriculum" and thus the school I am presently attending can just make it up as they go, or present topics in any order, or in any amount of completeness, because they can. Because the curriculum is schizophrenic and it keeps hopping around doing a smattering of this and a smattering of that, and promising that it somehow will all come together later, I am spending HUGE amounts of cramming instead of learning. If they had done one semester of LTC, and one med/surg and had everything happening in regular time blocks, I'd be staying on one subject long enough to cement it thoroughly before moving to a different topic.

Streamline2010 · Jul 19, 2011

I'll add that if you really go prepared, have a thorough understanding of the material on the test, have a great recall of everything you've read, have had time to thoroughly study everything in the time frame allotted, and you read the question carefully to avoid the tripwires, the NCLEX-style question is easy-peasy. Those questions do have a black/white correct/incorrect answer, and if you are very prepared, you spot it right away.

My opinion is that the real difficulty with all RN programs is TMI in too little time for most students, even the ones who don't have to work their way through. And that's a good reason why you kind of have to "shop" schools a little to find one whose methods, content, and pace match your learning style: So that you are not having to do it all backwards, uphill, one bare foot, and one high heel, to get a C for all that effort, when somebody else is attending a well-designed and well-orchestrated curriculum elsewhere and getting decent grades for 1/2 the effort that you are putting in. Sometimes, the school just muffs it. And some schools run with too little $$$ and too little facilities for the volume of students they admit, and the students get shortchanged. NCLEX pass rate is important, but "the student experience" is what you'll have to live with, so choose wisely. This hospital program I'm at knocks itself out training us how to give a Good Hospital Experience to their Medicaid "customers," but has yet to make any effort to stop making the student's education a totally miserable and exhausting and demoralizing experience.

I am actively re-evaluating the other RN college degree programs that I was accepted to, and their structure, pace, content, and caliber of instructor. Sometimes, you just have to give a school a failing grade for not doing their job efficiently and making students lives total misery. Two more students quit today. There are probably only 2 or 3 that are happy with the educational experience they are getting. Two experienced instructors are leaving at the end of the term.

OB-nurse2013, BSN, RN · Jul 19, 2011

I really think everyone is going to give you such different opinions. It really depends what comes easy to you and what doesn't. For example everyone says a science major is harder but personally I don't feel that way. I like science, loved organic chemistry and barely studied and everyone thought that was hard. Stat's was also very easy for me but a lot may have trouble with it. Now that I shared that I will say I struggled a lot in a dumb art class and had no clue what I was ever supposed to be seeing. Everyone found it so simple.

Nursing school in my opinion is hard because they just pile on lot's of little stupid papers, assisgnments, lot's of exams, lab stuff, skill check off's and then all the little extra stuff like seminars and stuff that make it hard. I do think the tests are kind of hard because at my school are grading scale is very high and tests are very few questions so it's hard to get an A which most of us got lots of in pre-req's. It's not impossible I got all A's and one B+ my first semester but you can't worry as much I guess I would say about grades. Good Luck! It's been harder then I imagined and not as bad as I've heard is my best explanation.

VioletKaliLPN, LPN · Jul 19, 2011

well, one big difference is required reading of upwards of 500 pages of material for a test each week. you are expected to read and understand what you read. lectures cannot and will not cover everything, you are expected to take responsibility for the info too.

AgentBeast, MSN, RN · Jul 20, 2011

The questions on the exams aren't as straight forward as they are in most any other class.

tech1000 · Jul 20, 2011

I think the only difference was the time I had to put into nursing. Honestly, the classes were not very difficult, it was just that I had to read EVERYTHING and study a lot. I knew I would use all of the stuff I was learning when I became a nurse, so I didn't just want to try and scrape by. The tests were really in depth. To answer one question, you could have to know about four different things completely. Nursing classes were definitely not my hardest classes (except pharm), they were just BY FAR the most time consuming.

mangopeach · Jul 20, 2011

The biggest difference for me is the massive amount of work and studying to be done in so little time. The workload is just not comparable to anything most of us have ever done.

3boys_n_a_dog · Jul 20, 2011

Take a look at this site to see how the questions are set up.

http://wps.prenhall.com/chet_kozier_fundamentals_8/61/15675/4012970.cw/index.html

This is the 8th edition and we are in the 9th. This should give you an idea of how it works. You can read the chapters then take the NCLEX review questions.