Hello everyone,
A little about myself is I'm a full-time employee with a fire department. I actually decided I wanted to leave the fire department to pursue a degree in nursing since I enjoy the medical field and I had a few family members that are nurses. The reason I am posting this is cause I am not sure what to do. I am currently enrolled in the pre req Anatomy and Physiology part 1 for the summer semester. Im not going to lie when I say the the fire chapter was super easy cause it was basically me schooling for becoming an EMT. The first chapter basically was anatomical terms, locations and planes. Now what I am struggling with is chapter two and three which is Chemistry comes alive and Cells: The living tissue. I have a midterm exam coming up on chapter one through three in six days and my issue is I am still stuck on chapter two trying to comprehend the chemistry comes alive and all these amino acids, Proteins, Enzymes, Monosaccharides, Disaccharides, Polysaccharids, Lipids, Carbs and so on. The teacher wants us for one part of the test to draw Dehydration synthesis and Hydrolysis for all of these which I don't even know where to begin. For example I understand that dehydration synthesis is the removal of water to bring two elements together and hydrolysis is the adding of water to break it up. But when you ask me to draw it thats when I get so damn confused and Im feeling so rushed to learn all this stuff. For example my teacher is already moving onto chapter four and I'm still stuck on chapter two. I study almost 12 hours a today not including the time spent in class and I just struggle to comprehend all this information which is leaving me lost, stressed and getting seconds thoughts.
The reason why this is all feeling like its coming down on me is cause from what I have heard this class is supposed to be the hardest of the pre reqs but the easiest compared to nursing school cause i heard nursing school is so much harder and the chemistry involved in it will just get harder. This scares me cause if I can't even comprehend the basics then how the heck am I supposed to move on? I feel so left behind that its hard for me to get back and catch up. Seems like everyone else in the class is getting and understanding this so easily and I'm like dude what the heck are you talking about. I never took biology and chemistry in high school so I don't have anything to fall back on and on top of all this i tried to see if my school has a tutor and my school notified me saying that they have no tutors available for my subjects and are currently looking for some but not sure when that will be. Im already seeing myself failing this test cause I have such little time that I don't know what to do but study but my studying is not good enough.
My dream is to become a nurse practitioner but this is holding me up =(. Im the kind of person where I don't want to just memorize this material but to learn and understand it. I hate getting b's and c's as a grade cause thats not good enough for me and I don't just want to squeeze by in nursing cause I heard if you get below a 75 they kick you out.