So how different is nursing school?

jenhev16 · Jul 21, 2011

hey there,

i am currently halfway through my 3rd semester of nursing school. (graduate december 16th!) and honestly, looking back, it's hard to believe i've made it this far. i was a cna before i started and made it onto the dean's list every semester during my prereqs. the first 3 months of nursing school sucked! it took me awhile to get used to the application/NCLEX style questions and my first clincal instructor was...not so great. i was barely passing exams and leaving clinicals feeling dumber than a box of rocks but it's totally doable!!! nursing school just takes some getting used to. i thought about quitting multiple times toward the beginning. now looking back, it seems so silly. believe people when they say time really does fly! and most of all, just enjoy yourself. there will still be days when you'll ask yourself, "why am i doing this again?" but then there will come the days when you get off of clinicals or home from a test and think "i'm starting to feel like a real nurse."

mamayogibear · Jul 25, 2011

So for most of you the biggest difference has been the amount of out of classroom reading? I have read in another thread to just read the topics discussed in lecture then to spend an hour doing practice questions. Who here reads everything and how did you do? Who here reads what is in lecture and practices test questions?

With A&P I was a really visual learner and would draw things out to learn them. I did the same for Micro and Biochem and feel like I really learned the material. However for Statistics there was nothing to draw out and I would spend hours reading and writing out everything but still don't feel like I know any of it despite the A.

For nursing school is it possible to learn by drawing and labeling? Or just by doing practice problems? I am a hands on and visual learner so I would like to know how other hands on/visual learners have found success and also the most time efficient way to study!

Luckily I have all my co-requisite courses done so instead of taking 16-18 units per term I only have to take 12 units in core nursing courses, I'm not sure if that will matter or not though.

Thanks for all the advice thus far!

mangopeach · Jul 25, 2011

For me its not just the amount of reading. I don't read every single page assigned, even so, its still a lot of studying even without reading all the pages assigned. Especially when you get to Med Surg. I don't read every page assigned in the text book. I do have other resources though that I use like Saunders, Reviews and Rationales and the Success Series.

There's still a lot of other work going on other than reading. I had 12 hour clinical days every week this semester. Before Clinicals, you have to go to the hospital and pick up your patient the day before (your patient may be on 20 different drugs, or more. Gotta know them all - what they are for, the complications, what labs you gotta check, etc, gotta get started on your clinical paper work, doing the drug cards, starting the care plan. After clinicals, finishing your care plan. We had 2 huge papers assigned as well. We still had skills checkoffs, so quite often I had checkoffs one day, an exam the following day followed by clinicals after that and still making sure I was putting in enough study time for the exam and practice time for skills checkoff. Thankfully I'm done with skills checkoffs after this semester so that should free up a little more time for me so that I can find a tech job.

At my school, people tend to fail out of the first year due to failing skills checkoffs moreso than failing exams. So its a huge relief to be done with skills at this point.