Study/test taking tips?

[WhItEt86]

I'm currently I'm my 2nd semester of a 2 year RN program. Last semester, I did wonderful. I got a final grade of a B in Fundamentals and Nursing Process 1. So far this semester, I feel I'm struggling a tad. I am currently in Nursing Process 2 and an OB class. So far I'm doing great in OB, but I failed my first exam in nursing process. I got a 72% ( passing is 75% or above). I know and understand that it's recoverable, and that 2/3 of my class failed it. The overall average for the class was a 77%.

But I just can't shake the disappointment in this. I studied very hard for my test. I put in a lot of hours and felt so confident the morning of. When I got to the test, nothing made sense, it seemed. My next test is in 5 days and I'm not really freaking out, but I'm nervous. I want to pass. I understand each semester gets harder, but I want to nip this in the bud. I usually study by skimming through my reading assignments and making notecards, then reading my ATI book, and taking tons of practice exams I find online. But I also have an instructor that used to write questions for the NCLEX. I feel that I might struggle through this semester and I really don't want to. Any advice would be appreciated and help me. Thanks :)

[RunBabyRN]

Do your instructors write study guides at all? Some of mine do, and they can be hit or miss, but they can be one helpful tool.

What about power points? Do they tend to test from those? Do they post them online for you?

Can you record lectures and listen to them in the car? You can also record yourself reading stuff aloud and listen to that. I've done that on the way to and from clinicals or school. Plus, making the recording is more review. The more methods you can incorporate (without making yourself crazy!), the better.

You can even try drawing stuff out for yourself- sometimes that helps. I'm a big note card person like you, and I take them everywhere. If I have a few minutes to kill while in line somewhere or something like that, or even driving, I'll go over a few.

[WhItEt86]

My lectures are embedded online. Our classes are hybrid classes. So we go to class once a week to have done review time, but they're all youtube lectures. We also have ATI incorporated into our program. So I could relisten to the lectures, I suppose.

Also we always get power points but I've noticed they sometimes put stuff in very sneakily that wasn't on the power point. So then it gets super confusing and frustrating.

Thanks for the advice tho. I think recording my voice while reading might help.