Now that I am in the home stretch of graduating with my BSN, I feel like I have the knowledge and wisdom to share with you 6 ways to survive nursing school! I am 27 days away from getting my pin and tassel.. I promise you can get to this point, too.
#1: HAVE CONFIDENCE
I wish someone would have warned me that nursing school was going to change everything I knew about school and studying. Everyone knows there are so many types of learners, and I happen to be a kinesthetic learner… which came in great during my Fundamentals of Nursing course in my first semester. Pharmacology on the other hand? Not so much.
Memorizing a list of drug names, mechanisms of actions, adverse effects, etc. was the hardest thing for me to grasp as a new nursing student. I failed multiple exams and my confidence in not only my “smarts” but in my calling plummeted. I allowed myself to get into a slump for too long before pulling myself out of it and my schooling suffered from it.
If you are a specific learner then go to faculty or other students who are maybe the same kind of learner and come up with a plan. I learned that creating drug charts with colors specific to a drug category is what worked for me. I ended up repeating Pharmacology, but I passed it with a high grade the second time and the foundation it provided carried me through the rest of nursing school. If I had only had confidence in my abilities and worked with others to help myself instead of feeling defeated, I could have accomplished great things without so many tears and late nights.
#2. HAVE A STUDY PARTNER/GROUP
All of my life I have been a lone studier. I knew how I studied best and I didn’t need distractions or wasted time trying to teach someone else things I already knew. If you have that mindset, throw it on out the door because that way of thinking has no place in nursing school! So many pages of reading are assigned, multiple lectures are given in a week by so many professors (I had more than four in one course), and there are many notes you will miss because the teacher has to fly through all 148 slides in thirty minutes so she has time to go through the second powerpoint that is 67 slides before class ends.
You will miss things. It’s inevitable. Having a study partner or group that is driven will take you far. Make a group text and send random questions that you think would make great exam material. Meet at a local library for neutral ground and less distractions – mine here offered private rooms with large whiteboards. You have many hours you will be spending with these people, so make sure you pick the right ones!! I got lucky and mine was kind of just tossed in my lap.
#3. GET ORGANIZED
Ever had to plan out time to eat, sleep, and breathe? No? Well get ready! Having a planner to begin with is an amazing way to get organized. If having a cute one will make you more likely to open it then go for it! I loved the Happy Planners but they can get kind of bulky. I recommend one like the Katie Daisy Planner or Lilly Pulitzer Planner which are all available on Amazon. I like the latter because they are more slim, come in a variety of sizes, and have a monthly grid view as well as pages divided into weeks with lines if you need to put more detail. The grid view gives you an overall idea of what you have coming up, while you keep all of the extensive to-do’s saved for the following pages that you can view weekly.
Fill the planner out when the class schedules are released. Have the classes differentiated by color pen so you don’t mix them up. I personally had all exams and quizzes in red. If I needed reminding as to what class the quiz or exam was in I would put one class in the top of the monthly box in its designated color, the quiz/exam directly under in red, and the next class in the bottom of the box. It is almost like when you have a topic with a bullet point underneath. If you create a system early and stick with it, it becomes routine and simple to follow.
If you have a consistent schedule for the semester as far as class, clinical, and work goes then create alarms for the week and set it to repeat weekly. I promise there will be days when you stay up all night reading your textbook & you fall asleep sitting up with the light on and no alarm set for class the next day. Set your alarms ahead of time.
Remember that study group you made earlier? Get in the habit of texting to remind each other of deadlines coming up and due dates for exam downloads. You do not want to be the student emailing the teacher at two o’clock in the morning when you dart up in bed to realize you never downloaded your exam. It is just going to add even more stress you don’t have the energy for and cause you to have poor performance on your exam.
#4. MAKE TIME FOR YOU
The more organized you stay and the more adapted to nursing school you become, the more your well-being and sanity can take priority. Sleep is your friend, don’t neglect it! I learned that I focused more and performed better if I had a full 8 hours of sleep.. shocking. I know. My first semester I was getting about 6 hours per WEEK. It was unhealthy and I was living off of Bang energy drinks and iced coffee. Iced meaning it started hot but I got so distracted by work that it was cold when I got to it.
I began setting alarms to wake up at 6 or 630 in the morning to begin school work. I would take a break mid-day to go walk or get on social media. After 30 minutes to an hour I would make myself turn my phone on silent or even off and continue putting in work. By 1900 I would sit down for dinner, shower, and climb in my bed for 30 minutes of me-time. I would turn my tv off and make sure my room was nice and dark by 2030 to hopefully fall asleep by 2100. This allowed me about 9 hours of sleep a night, meaning good focus for good grades and a happy mind. I began thriving.
#5. MAKE CUTS
As school went on I realized I would spend more time on social media instead of studying. I was sitting at an average grade in classes which was not acceptable because I plan on going back to grad school eventually. A few weeks before school would start I would delete my social media. All of it, except Snapchat… this was before snapchat had the channels where you could get lost watching videos for hours on how to make ugly door hangers or bake bread.
I knew I would spend a max of 10 minutes at a time on Snapchat so it was allowed to stay. Everything else had to go. I got enough social interaction watching Snap Stories and talking to people in my study group that I could stay sane. But the cleansing period between deleting social media and school starting to fill my time void was difficult. I had no drive to open Instagram and Facebook anymore though by the time class started so I was able to fully focus on what I was learning. This improved my grades and overall understanding of material greatly.
Friends will have to understand that weekly downtown barhopping it no longer a priority for you, too. I have had two best friends since middle school. One is now thriving in Tennessee working for a large tax firm, and the other is becoming grounded and working hard to become the next interior designer you will be pinning to your dream boards. Ask me the last time I have seen either one of them. Months! It’s been months! Ask my boyfriend how many nights he sat beside me watching Youtube while I studied just so we could have some time “together”. If being a nurse if your goal, and it is your priority, then it will take priority over going out. Especially during quarantine.
#6. FIND SOMETHING THAT BRINGS YOU PEACE
When you become stressed you need to have something to ground you. I had never had a panic attack or anxiety in my life… until nursing school. I sat in a ball shaking, crying, having trouble breathing because a minor upset just threw me over the edge. I was not coping with stress or having an outlet to destress because I chose studying and work over gym time. I knew something had to change because I was not going to be leaving nursing school on medication to help me function just enough to care for other people. How was I going to be able to pour into others from an empty cup?
For me, it was music, church, and worship. I would take breaks throughout the day to pray for peace and comfort, to ask God to help me discern the most right answer on exams (because in nursing school they are all right), and to just calm my nerves when I began to become overwhelmed. I handed my anxiety over for trust instead. I had not been brought that far just to be thrown to the wolves. Eventually I began realizing I had been praying and didn’t even know it, or I would catch myself humming the tune to a worship song. This outlet is not for everyone, but it is one that brought me comfort and helped me through the hardest semester of school.
until next time!
XoXo, Mads