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.
Im not sure if I have already mentioned this in my previous comments but I did want to say that without a doubt these courses are tough and require a decent amount of studying but I think the reason why I am struggling or was struggling was due to the reason of it being a summer course and my teacher just rushing through the course like he doesn't even want to be there.
Granted if this was a regular semester course than we would have so much more time between test to study but we just do not have that time cause once we take one test on three chapters we end up having anther test 7 days from that test day to learn the next three chapters.
Honestly from what the guys have told me at work, nursing classes are not as hard as the pre reqs but at the same time that does not mean its a choice to slack off and see if you can just breeze through it. Of course I'm going to take nursing seriously but I agree that drawing certain things won't benefit me at all on the NCLEX exam. Thankfully though I did learn how to do it and its not has hard as I previously thought. Just takes a bit of time is all.
Thank you again so much for the encouragement! I have been under so much stress lately and it seems like everything is crashing down on me. In literally two weeks I got into a car accident which lead me to call a tow company to come tow my car. Upon the company towing my car they damaged it even worse. Well at first I thought okay they will pay for that damage and all the other damage will get fixed due to my insurance. We'll today I just found out my car is considered a total loss and can't be fixed. So now I'm without a car and I'm a college student working a full time job and on top of that I need to start looking for another car. Then on top of all this I strained my back and now I need back surgery. Im only 23 years old and Im healthy. I have no idea who I pissed off or what I did to the universe but it seems like everything is going wrong. Im under so much stress its crazy.
But on top of all that Im going to remain positive and try my best to stay on course. Im sorry if it sounded like I was just whining and complaining.
Thank you again so much for the encouragement! I have been under so much stress lately and it seems like everything is crashing down on me. In literally two weeks I got into a car accident which lead me to call a tow company to come tow my car. Upon the company towing my car they damaged it even worse. Well at first I thought okay they will pay for that damage and all the other damage will get fixed due to my insurance. We'll today I just found out my car is considered a total loss and can't be fixed. So now I'm without a car and I'm a college student working a full time job and on top of that I need to start looking for another car. Then on top of all this I strained my back and now I need back surgery. Im only 23 years old and Im healthy. I have no idea who I pissed off or what I did to the universe but it seems like everything is going wrong. Im under so much stress its crazy.
But on top of all that Im going to remain positive and try my best to stay on course. Im sorry if it sounded like I was just whining and complaining.
I understand. We all have seen ourselves in you at one point in our lives. We all have faced challenges without knowing how to handle the situation in a constructive way. I didn't get this way of thinking overnight...it took patience :)The good part is you are able to turn the situation around. You got into a car accident but you made it out alive. That was grace. You are able to turn the situation around. Yes, your car is total and now you are able to create a new plan. Life is good. Who said you have to be in a rush? You are 23. Get your health and life circumstances in order first before tackling school work. You do not need to get loans and put yourself in future debt. We will always have detours in life but its how you adapt to handle the situation sets you apart.
Firstly let me say I apologize for not writing back in quite a while. I have been so busy with things going around and studying that I kinda just forgot but I did want to share with you how I felt about the first test I was concerned about. The test consisted of 66 multiple choice questions that were 1 point each and then 6 written questions. Well out of all the multiple choice I knew all of them expect five which I had to take an educated guess on but then I came to the written part and I was able to answer all them including the bonus with knowing the answer expect for two which both of them were worth 8 and 10 points so I am kinda nervous about losing all those points but I will say that I was quite surprised by the amount of information I was able to remember.
Hey, OP, I'm really proud of you. I'm in a similar situation... I've never been good at school. I was always day-dreaming, and up until high school I was completely clueless as to how my peers were learning and I wasn't. I knew I had a huge problem with day-dreaming (and I DID try to control that, but I simply couldn't. Every time I became aware that I was day-dreaming and tried to focus, 10 minutes would go by and I'd realized that I had been day-dreaming AGAIN). So, I never developed study skills, and although I had great reading comprehension (I still was an avid reader growing up) I did terrible when it came to comprehending textbooks because I never learned how to handle such "big" information and I hated not being able to daydream while studying.
After continuing to do poorly in college because I was overwhelmed with the amount of reading and learning I had to do, I dropped out for two years, and during my time off I forced myself to start reading, to build confidence, to help me develop a stronger attention span and to learn how to ignore other "pleasantries" such as daydreaming and just... Not having to think hard.
I'm proud to say that I've come a LONG way and have developed mental skills that I previously did not have! I'm able to read long articles now, by learning how to keep myself curious by trying to figure out why "such and such" happened and by ignoring a voice in my mind that wants to say "This is boring. I don't want to read this. I can't read this." A lot of it was just building up my self-confidence and ignoring a voice that would tell me that I couldn't learn, because I would listen to it and my brain would shut down.
I also was recently diagnosed as ADD and Autistic. I only wish the diagnosis came when I was younger so I could've gotten help with learning how to learn. I'm on ADD medication now, as well, and it helps TREMENDOUSLY.
Some other tips that may help:
- Before reading your chapter, state to yourself what the chapter is about, and try to get an idea of why it will be important to learn. This will help you create a mental picture of the science you are trying to learn, so that while you're reading you can connect the facts to "the bigger picture".
- DON'T OVERTHINK THE FACTS. I do this ALL the time, and I think that's what makes me think "I'm stuck." Learn the facts, and figure out how they connect to each other.
- I see that you're doing this already, but again, learning from multiple resources is a great way to synthesize information.
Again, glad to hear you retained more information than you thought you would! If this is your passion, then keep trying! It'll make it worth so much more in the end.
I am going to just jump in here with my .2 cents. I have not read through all the responses , so apologize in advance if I repeat anything. I got my EMT certificate last year. I know each program is a little different , but at the end of the day we all take the same test to become certified. The EMT course is a heavy school load with all the learning material, labs, and clinical hours involved so I feel confident if you can get EMT cert then you're more than capable to learn these sciences.
I am older (37) have three kids at home and was a high school drop out. I got pregnant at 15 and got my GED. I have ADD as well so it's difficult for me to focus on any particular thing for an extended period of time but here I am, in school, back at it for my ADN. The only prereqs I have left are the last of my sciences. I took Anatomy last semester with a cadaver lab (by far the most difficult class I have taken so far) and I passed with a very hard earned B . Im taking Chem now in the summer, and in fall will take Micro and Physio in the fall. If I can do this with kids, not a lick of science classes behind me, a learning disability then I feel like most other people can too. You (and I ) are able to take these classes without having any prior science experience is because they are all introductory levels.
You need to back off the "studying". 12 hours a day is just too much and after so long your brain is going to just stop. Everything you're reading is just going in and out of your ear and its all words. There is such a thing as studying too much.
You might benefit by taking fewer classes at a time. This has helped me a lot. I am taking Chem right now, in the summer by itself, I cant imagine taking another class. I find myself being a little bit of a slower learner, taking me more time to wrap my mind around material. You seem to be stuck on the fact that you are struggling in one unit vs other ones. I don't know about everyone else, but from my own experience and others that I know, you aren't going to excel in every unit/chapter of your studies. In my lecture portion of anatomy the first unit was over the Cells, tissue, blood etc.; That was the worst unit for me, and when the comprehensive final came at the end of the course, those are the chapters I went over again. You're not going to learn it all in one class, just learn the basics and you will learn bits of it here and there and you continue your medical education. It all just builds on top of each other. I kinda feel like you're taking on too much at once.
Youtube! Find a few people who you think teaches well on their videos and subscribe. I feel like some of those awesome people who put so much time into their tutoring videos deserve my tuition more than my professors. Listening to different people explain in can help give you different ways of looking at material you're trying to learn.
Quit listening to others. The classes are all going to be difficult to some degree. As to which is more so than another depends on the person, how good their professor is, and each individuals own strengths, weakness, and interests - Chem is going to suck more so for someone who hates it vs loves it. Its okay to get advice and opinions from others ( I do it often :) but, also don't life your life by what others tell you. Also, take everything with a grain of salt- people tend to exaggerate some too.
I was always day-dreaming, and up until high school I was completely clueless as to how my peers were learning and I wasn't. I knew I had a huge problem with day-dreaming (and I DID try to control that, but I simply couldn't. Every time I became aware that I was day-dreaming and tried to focus, 10 minutes would go by and I'd realized that I had been day-dreaming AGAIN). So, I never developed study skills, and although I had great reading comprehension (I still was an avid reader growing up) I did terrible when it came to comprehending textbooks because I never learned how to handle such "big" information and I hated not being able to daydream while studying. 
I'm on ADD medication now, as well, and it helps TREMENDOUSLY. 
If this is your passion, then keep trying! It'll make it worth so much more in the end. 
NYCNative21
150 Posts
Hey Folksbrtippin,
Im not sure if I have already mentioned this in my previous comments but I did want to say that without a doubt these courses are tough and require a decent amount of studying but I think the reason why I am struggling or was struggling was due to the reason of it being a summer course and my teacher just rushing through the course like he doesn't even want to be there.
Granted if this was a regular semester course than we would have so much more time between test to study but we just do not have that time cause once we take one test on three chapters we end up having anther test 7 days from that test day to learn the next three chapters.
Honestly from what the guys have told me at work, nursing classes are not as hard as the pre reqs but at the same time that does not mean its a choice to slack off and see if you can just breeze through it. Of course I'm going to take nursing seriously but I agree that drawing certain things won't benefit me at all on the NCLEX exam. Thankfully though I did learn how to do it and its not has hard as I previously thought. Just takes a bit of time is all.
I really appreciate your comment