While we're talking about how you carry your books ...

Orientation day and the first week you probably will not need to bring your books. I would only start bringing books until after teachers have said so. Most will say, Oh, as a class reminder, we will need books for this date next week. Half of the class will never bring their books, because you will mostly just use them for references or studying/assignments at home. It does depend on the course, but the teach will always tell you. If not, ask your first week!

Here are some of my essentials I got packed:

advil

$$$ in my binder

binder with notes with seperate tabs for each course

post-its and sticky tabs to mark pages

day planner

highlighters and red pens

I also made a binder with basic things like lab values, medical terminology, common drugs, and have a mini nurses dictionary to take with me to class.

I did buy a mini laptop, but I'm not planning on bringing that until at least the second week of school, or whenever it's needed. Also, make sure your institution will allow you to have a tape recorder, some are weird about that.

We weren't required to bring books to class and basically everything was on the powerpoint. In clinical we brought our drug books (if you didn't have one on your smartphone) and a pocket nursing diagnosis book. For classes I just brought a binder for the class, a folder to put my information in for that class, and I had a zip up pencil bag that I put pens, highlighters, pencils, etc in. We had a clinical bag that we kept in the Sim Lab so no need to bring anything except for your stethoscope. If your school has lockers you could use that. But I wouldn't lug around all those books unless the teacher says its required. I didn't use a recorder because I don't listen to them plus I make sure to read the chapters for information and I write outlines of information from the chapters, and fill in some notes on the powerpoints from class.