So much information

First off, don't feel bad at all. I truly thought the first year of nursing school was the hardest. There is so much thrown at you all at once.

The other really big adjustment is to take everything you knew about taking tests and pretty much throw it out the window! I'm not sure if you have had any exams yet, but you will soon find out nursing exams are a brand new world. The rules are different, the rationale is different, they try to trick you. Each exam is slowly preparing you for taking your boards. They will teach you how to answer questions again :) Take a deep breath, you can do this.

As for all the reading...here is the secret I found that saved me for all of nursing school. Get a review and rationale book for your main classes. These basically give an outline and hit the high points of each topic. You can still do all of your reading in your assigned books, but when it comes to studying, the review and rationale book will save you tons of time. Perhaps if you are in a study group, you could all go in together on them!

My other advice to you...baby steps, break this down into tolerable chunks of work. It's the only way to do it.

Good luck, one step at a time! I promise, if you break this down into smaller pieces, it will be much more manageable.

I COMPLETELY felt the same way. I remember posting on Facebook how much respect I had for the nurses I knew. I've worked in healthcare for a long time, but I had NO idea, really, what all nurses had to know. I was like, what the blank did I get myself into???? in the first weeks of nursing school, but I survived, and you can, too.

You WON'T remember every S/S of every disease. That's reality. But that's where you have to starting thinking things through. What happens when the kidneys fail? If someone can't breathe? How does that affect the blood pH? Cognition? Etc. As you start piecing things together, you start to see the patterns, and while you won't be perfect (hello, you're human), you will get most of it right (and surprise yourself).