How to prepare for your first day of nursing school.

First of all RELAX! Yes, nursing school is hard and it will beat you up a bit but you will not survive if you are stressed out. You will hear horror stories from friends, family, other nursing students about how rough it will be, but don't listen to all of this.

Take sometime to think about your life and how to keep it in order, set your priorities (nursing school should be up toward the top), make sure you are balanced and you will be fine.

As far as being prepared for the first day, I would suggest taking a crash course in critical thinking. If you plan to pass the NCLEX you must learn how to think critically. Buy a book off of Amazon.com or from Barnes and Nobel that talks about basic test taking strategies and critical thinking steps and work though it. One book in particular that I study almost more than my text books is: Test Success for beginning nursing students. It provides some test taking tips and strategies as well as critical thinking basics.

Seriously, relax. Get a gym membership or find out if your school has a free gym (mine does). If you are not taking care of yourself you won't make it. Take a speed reading course or learn how to improve reading comprehension. There is a lot of reading in nursing school, and if you are like me you don't really learn by reading. Learn how to comprehend more of your reading.

Go to the VARK website and find out what your preferred learning style is. Take the simple test on that site and then spend sometime researching ways to enhance your learning through that method. I am a kinesthetic learner, which means I learn by doing so I take TONS of practice tests per each chapter. I also draw pictures and go to the lab a lot. This is how I learn but it is different for everyone. I can't read my text word for word, for me that is just a waste of time.

Websites Heart & Lung Health Assessment Study

I found some websites that are pretty helpful with Heart and Lung Study:

http://www.lawrencegaltman.com/Naugbio/CADAVER/GALLERY.htm

This website has some cadaver dissection videos. . . do not click if you are not comfortable seeing human dissection. They are very informative and provide excellent visual instruction.

http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/hhw/hhw_electrical.html

Very simple animation depicting the electrical conduction of the heart.

http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072495855/student_view0/chapter22/animation__the_cardiac_cycle__quiz_1_.html

Simple animation with narration and quizes, covering electrical conduction and diastole and systole.

http://depts.washington.edu/physdx/heart/demo.html

Heart sounds.

Second Degree BSN

So the second degree BSN is a beast all its own. Most people stress about nursing school. In the Second Degree programs, also called Accelerated BSN (ABSN) programs we complete nursing school in under two years. Yep! A BSN in about a year and a half.

Some schools have their ABSN programs last only about 13 months. It is crazy stuff. You really have to dedicate yourself pretty much to reading 24/7. It does all pay off though, my class is 19 people and we will have our BSN in about 18 months.

I don't plan to stop there. I don't think that you really can. While nursing provides a lot of benefits as far as a career you really should go on and get an MSN or DNP. I plan to become a CRNA right now. That is a Nurse Anesthetist for many reasons the top two being; I want to be around surgery and I want to make money. The nursing community is really pushing for advanced degrees for nurses anyway so it will be great to be ahead of the curve.

The above picture is an image from the MCON.edu website which is the school I attend and it is an actual picture from the SIM lab connected to the hospital that students use on a very regular basis.

This is the MCON building where I spend all my time. From about 7 or 8 am until the evening and ALL day on weekends.

Wild Turkeys

Well Peoria is kinda strange. As I was walking home from class a couple days ago I crossed paths with a wild turkey. Right in the middle of downtown. We saw four walk trough our front yard just the other day too it is strange.

School is busy still, but I am starting to learn exactly what I need to be stressing about and what I can relax about a little bit.

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