What advice would you 4th semester nursing students give to those just entering nursing?

JoseQuinones · Oct 15, 2015

1. Put everything else in your life off to one side and concentrate on school. This not the time to figure life stuff out. This is the life stuff you figured out.

2. Sidestep all the drama. Don't take sides in any of the inevitable cliquing, group project disputes, and general cattiness. They say that nurses eat their young. Unfortunatly, it seems to start in nursing school. Older students eat newer ones, and peers eat each other. Stay out of it. You are there to get your degree, not to to wage war.

3. Keep extracurriculars to a minimum. No matter what professors and school officials tell you, no employer cares if you were involved in the student nursing council or took honors classes in drama or ran for student government. These spaces are the perfect setting for the ugliness I mentioned in #2. If you want to expand your resume, look for volunteer opportunities outside of your school with established organizations like the Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity, Susan Komen, Mercy Ships, your local houses of worship, etc. You will do more on a summer missions trips to Haiti through a church than you will do in four years of Nursing Association meetings in the school rec center. And you will be with caring, compassionate adults who know people and can open doors, not with catty teenagers.

4. School will only teach you so much. Take charge of your NCLEX studying and start today. This site is full of recommendations.

5. Most important rule: Don't party and booze around. You are in nursing school. This is what you came to do. Hungover students bomb tests. They flunk out with tons of debt. Don't let peer pressure and bad "friends" who will never be nurses pull you down. Avoid the party animals like the plague.

Good luck!