Tomorrow is first day of nursing school and I'm freaking out

kjrobinetteSN · Aug 20, 2013

First off all I want to tell you that I think your writing English is great!

Try to build yourself up. I understand thoughts of failure, believe me, I have them and even dream about doing something wrong or failing and getting kicked out of school! I told another fellow nursing student on here to be confident in yourself! You know what you have to do to stay on top, so plan to set yourself up for success! Make sure you have all the supplies you need and make sure you have a space to call your own for studying. And keep doing what your doing! Coming here to AN to ask for advice will help you a lot! There are so many here to encourage and help along the way! Good luck on your first day and remember YOU CAN DO THIS!

akulahawkRN, ADN, RN, EMT-P · Aug 20, 2013

First off, I'm gonna say to you: welcome to nursing school! Now that you have a properly welcomed into nursing school, you should know this: nursing school really is not that hard. It's a lot of information presented to you very quickly. If you know the information from your prerequisite courses, you'll find that it's a lot easier for you to put things together to understand the specific nursing application.

Here's the next tip: Nursing School is about application of what you know. You won't have to do that too much in the first semester, though they'll introduce you to it. The first semester is going to be very much about learning to assess patients at a very basic level. Your instructors will take you through the very basics of patient assessment, vital signs, reading background information should such as patient history, patient's medications, allergies, and the like. In short, first semester is about learning lots of CNA skills and from there, you'll start learning to actually do something with what you've learned.

These basic skills are, quite literally, the foundation for what you'll be doing later on in school and in your career. The better you are at doing the skills, the better you'll be at assessing patients later on in your career. Don't worry if it takes a while to do a full patient assessment at first. Your new at it, and as long as your patients understand that, they're usually going to be understanding and very helpful in letting you learn. As time goes by, your speed at doing patient assessment will increase.

I am entering my third semester of nursing school again. The reason I tell you this is that it's okay to repeat a course you have to. Obviously it is a lot more fun and whatnot if you do not have to repeat a class, but a lot of us have failed a course in school and have gone on to do a whole lot better. You also need to understand that while it is very possible for you to get by with a minimal passing grade every semester, you need to shoot for the stars. If you do your best every time, every assessment, every exam and quiz, you will be able to know that you have done your best. You only fail yourself if you do not do that. Do your best.

For you to get this far, all the way into nursing school, it means that you have the academics behind you to make it all the way through. Entry into nursing school is hard because they know that below a certain point in GPA or whatever criteria they have, students are more likely to fail the course. That's also means that above that cutoff point, students are more likely to succeed. So you are already set up for success from the get-go.

Good luck and most importantly have fun! Nursing is a lot of hard work, but you should find it fun and challenging. I know that I do, if I did not, I would not be here still. When I wake up in the morning I know what I want to do, but perhaps I have advantage in that because I have known that this is what I want to do for a very long time and I do have experience in patient care and when I wake up in the morning this is what I do. I'm not saying that you have to be that devoted, but you should not wake up in the morning dreading going to work or going to school.

Pilotcookie · Aug 20, 2013

Thank you everybody! I survived the first day and it really wasn't bad... But I guess today was the easiest part of the program :)

queserasera, RN · Aug 20, 2013

Great luck to you! Don't doubt yourself, you made it this far and you will make it to the finish line :cool: