Nursing school is, as you well know, no joke. The hours are long, the studying never ends and the material is serious business. Not many of your friends will literally have “life or death” jobs. Were you prepared going in?
Brittney at The Nerdy Nurse says that when she went into nursing school, she didn’t know many actual nurses. Having little advice to go on, she set out believing that nursing school doesn’t have to be a terrible experience – and it wasn’t! (For the most part.)
In an effort to pay her experience forward, she recently posted a lengthy article on the finer points of hitting the books and making it out alive. Here are 5 things she thinks every nursing student needs to know:
Even if your life is filled with nurses and you think you know exactly what you will encounter when you hit the floor, you will soon find that you know nothing. I could give you a hundred examples, but you won’t get it until you’ve been there. There are so many facets of nursing that you just can’t understand until you have lived it. Don’t feel bad about it; just see it as an opportunity grow and learn.
Although many may not agree with me on this, in my humble opinion, that $1000 in text books per semester is outrageous and unneeded. Most of the information you need will be delivered in class and you might only look at the books for a sentence or two. I suggest finding out who your instructors are and asking them if you really need four books for the 2-credit class you are taking. If you can’t reduce the amount of books you need to buy, then you should partner with a friend and each buy half the books, then share. If you’re working together as study buddies then you won’t miss the books that you didn’t purchase. Also, you should buy your nursing textbooks online from somewhere like Amazon. Most of the time you get free 2-day shipping and it’s usually much cheaper than the college bookstore.
If you’re a perfectionist, then you are among your people. Many nurses have Type A personalities and strive for their best. This often includes making good grades. But alas, dear nursling, you might not be able to maintain that immaculate 4.0 you’ve had throughout the rest of your college experience. Nursing school is a different brand of difficult and incredibly smart young men and women find it very difficult to maintain the same grade point average they had going in. You might make a B or two. Heck you might even make a few Cs. That’s ok. As you will find out soon enough, what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger. And I haven’t met a nurse yet who was asked for his or her transcripts when applying for a job.
On the very first day of nursing school our teachers highly recommended that we find people to carpool with and study with. While I didn’t take them up on this suggestion initially, I really wish I had. It wasn’t until my second year in nursing school that I found a group of friends to study with and it really was a huge life saver. I would have done so much better the first year if I had just done this in this first place.
Get the last 10 tips and read the entire story at The Nerdy Nurse. Then, in the comments below, tell us your own tips for nursing students!
In an unprecedented step toward financial relief and health equity, the city of St. Paul,…
In early November 2024, a shocking tragedy unfolded in Budapest, Hungary, as American nurse Mackenzie…
If Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were to assume leadership of the U.S. Food and Drug…
On November 1, 2024, federal authorities charged 38-year-old Rebecca Fadanelli, owner of Skin Beaute Med…
In a quaint little restaurant in Echo Park, an up and coming author is sitting…
In a case that has captured public attention for its bizarre and chilling details, a…
