How to Rock Nursing School

Don’t get me wrong, my college years were some of the best of my life, but nursing school is freaking HARD. I don’t miss it one bit.

I’m writing this because I was not a straight A nursing student. I worked hard, cried a lot, felt like I was drowning, and wanted to quit on a number of occasions… BUT I graduated with my BSN with honors (and a minor!), passed my NCLEX in 75 questions, and got a job in a Level I Trauma Center ICU right out of school.

I’m not saying this to brag, but to remind you that you don’t have to get all A’s in nursing school to get a great job upon graduation. And you totally don’t need straight A’s to pass the NCLEX! If you’re feeling overwhelmed with the idea of nursing school, or maybe you’re already in it: take heart. You really can do it! Sometimes it just takes a few minor mental changes to help you find your groove.

Get a planner or download a good calendar app

I personally HATE the calendar app on the iPhone, which is why I stuck with a physical planner for so long. It wasn’t until a month or two ago that I finally switched to an app called TimeTree. I like that you can see what is going on each day for the month without having to click on each individual day for this app. I loved my planner (I’ve used both the Lily Pulitzer one and this one and I loved them both), but it got the point where I hated not being able to make plans on the fly without checking my calendar (that I kept at home or my nursing bag), so I finally converted.

I would always take my syllabus at the beginning of the semester and immediately fill in my calendar with all of the dates for papers, exams, quizzes, and projects, so that nothing would surprise me and I could budget my time accordingly every week.

(Here’s what TimeTree looks like in action if you’re interested!):

Pick two things

When I precept nursing students now and they ask me for advice, this is the number one thing I tell them. When I was in school, the number one way I saw people fail out was they stretched themselves thin. SO, what I say is to pick two things from the list:

• Nursing school
• Work
• Social life
• Sports
• Family

If you want to get through nursing school, one of those things is going to have to be nursing school. Which means you can pick one more thing and then the other things need to be seriously minimized. I was in a very privileged situation where I did not have to work to get myself through school, so the two things that I chose were nursing school and a social life. Moms that I went to school had to pick family and nursing school, but often times they still had to have a great support system to help them with their kids in order to keep up with the demands of school.

I went to school with a super brilliant girl who ended up failing out our junior year because she chose sports, social life, and tried to choose nursing school too. Ultimately it stretched her too thin, and she had to reapply to the program.

If you have to pick work (like a lot of people have to), find out what year of your program is considered the hardest and try to minimize your hours as best as you can (so that you can have time to keep yourself sane), even if that means taking out some loans. Ultimately it will pay off if it means you avoid having to repeat a semester or year! I worked my senior year of college (which was considered the easiest year for my program), but my social life also wasn’t as active as it had been in previous years.

You can still have a social life if you pick one of these other things, but just know that it is not going to get to be anywhere close to as active as some of your friends who might be in other majors.

P.S. if you feel the need to comment and say “Hey!!! YOU’RE WRONG BC I was able to do 3 of the things on that list!!!!!”– I’m so happy you were able to be the exception to my rule- but the reality is that the vast majority of people cannot give 100% of themselves to three different things.

Attend study sessions

This was something that I wish I had done sooner in nursing school! Pathophysiology is one of those “weed out” freshman classes for the program I was in and that you have to pass before you even apply for the program (you didn’t officially become part of the nursing program until your sophomore year at my University). It wasn’t until I had epically bombed a pathophysiolgy test (probably on hematology), that I looked into study sessions. Check and see if your school has something similar, but my school had *free* weekly study groups held by Junior nursing students who were looking to gain volunteer hours for their resume. They just reviewed the information with us that we had gone over in class. Sometimes just having someone present information in a slightly different way can make it stick!

I actually ending up leading a study session when I was a junior, which I found to be super helpful in my own studying!

Don’t set unrealistic goals for yourself

Obviously, don’t completely lower your standards for yourself, but also don’t set a goal to get an A+ on every test– ya feel?

Don’t be cocky

Don’t think that because you were a CNA or worked in a hospital, that nursing school will be easier for you. Don’t think that because you were a straight A student in high school and never studied, that you will have an easy time in nursing school (hello ME!).

Schedule study time for yourself

Designating time that you will spend to studying is super important. Otherwise you may get distracted with other things and push studying aside for later.

Schedule self-care time

Just as important as scheduling study time. Nursing school is hard, so make sure you give yourself time to breathe every so often. And also on that note, make sure you’re taking care of yourself daily! Maybe if you can’t make it to the gym everyday, at least try and go on a 15 minute walk outside everyday. Drink water. Eat some fruit. Meditate for 2 minutes.

Try to get experience in the summer

If you aren’t in a year-round program, try and do an externship during the summer, volunteer, work as a CNA… anything that might help you connect the dots better and help give you context to the things you are learning!

Figure out how you learn

If you go to a traditional four-year university like I did, you’ll probably have to take some kind of weird freshman class. I never understood what the point of it was, but one good thing did come from that class. We took one of those tests to figure out what kind of learner you are and I learned that I do NOT learn in an auditory manner. I learn visually, kinesthestically, and musically. I think it’s really helpful to take one of those tests, because if you’re like me, you’ll have a lightbulb moment of “oh, that’s why I never gather anything from lectures”. For me, this meant focusing more on the PowerPoints from a lecture and then finding visual aids after the lecture to help me remember the material. Pinterest is an awesome tool for this! There are so many cute pictures and pneumonics to help you memorize things.

Give yourself grace

You’re going to have a test that you bomb, you’re going to have days where you want to cry (I cried A LOT), and you might feel inadequate a few times (or maybe a lot of times)! All I can say is to talk to yourself like you would a friend, pick yourself up, and keep fighting. YOU CAN DO IT.