What helped me

[Kialya, ASN]

When I was studying, I audio recorded the lectures, took my laptop to class and typed in anything I felt I needed during lecture.

After class, I took my rainbow of highlighters and I would highlight the dickens out of my textbooks.

I then took 3x5 note cards, but cut them all in half. I would write a question on one side and then (here is the trick) word the answer in the form of another question on the backside. For a poor simplified example, front side would read "How do you convert kilograms to pounds?" The back side reads "2.2 pounds equals how many kilograms?" You get the idea. This does multiple things: It forces you to slow down and write up questions from your text book and it does so in a meaningful way that drives the point home since you are required to think of the question in a way so that the answer also forms a question.

When you have a whole chapter of these small notecards, you 'speed study' them. You can do this anywhere because they are tiny and portable. Read the question; if you know the answer right away, you confirm the correct answer, TURN THE CARD OVER and place it in the back of the stack. If you did not know the answer immediately, put the card still facing the question you missed about 20 cards back in the stack and keep going. This will make sure the questions you are getting stuck on will be ones you return to repeatedly. Once you have mastered the stack you will start to see the back side questions. Mastering the whole stack means you have them all down back and front. Do this for each chapter.

I got straight A's in college nursing school with this method. Is it fast? Nope. Does it require work? Yes. Is it worth it? Absolutely.

[SunkissedRN2b]

That's a great idea! Thank you for sharing.

[Julie311]

This is a great idea, will definitely be trying for my medsurg final! Thanks!

[Kialya, ASN]

Good luck with your finals :)

[NatalieW33]

Thanks for sharing. I just got accepted in the nursing program. Excited and nervous. Great tips.

[amber0627]

I use index cards but never thought to put an additional question like that on the back. Great idea.

[Sure2BaRN]

I created a brain book, an idea I got from Nurse Nacole. I use index cards that I title and write new information on, two hole punch them, and place them under the proper color coded alphabet tab in a mini binder for easy reference.

For ex., I have an index card titled Drug Calculations and it's filed under the "D" tab or an index card titled Respiratory Drugs, filed under the "R" tab. Creating these cards and adding them to the mini binder saves me a lot of time and is an easy resource for my clinical.

[Natasha A., CNA, LVN]

Love it