Studying: Pre-Nursing vs. Nursing

Pre-Nursing

I’ll admit I’m a damn good student because I studied my ass off. Even though I was studying my ass off, I fell short a lot of the time (insert height joke here). In high school I struggled to get good grades because I wasn’t sure of my learning style yet and there were always better students than me. I always had to study a little more than everyone. When I decided to go into nursing, I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into. I heard the rumors of how hard nursing was, the percentages of students dropping out of pre-nursing, and the slim chance I had of getting into the program. It scared the shit out of me, and it’s probably scaring you too. It’s okay to be scared. I didn’t let my fear get in my way though. I really buckled down and did my very best. I had a lot of help throughout the way, but I really found out what worked for me in terms of studying, understanding, and grasping information. Trust me, there’s a lot of information to hold. 

Every pre-nursing journey has foundation classes and classes that were just GEs. I’m mostly going to focus on the pre-nursing science classes: chemistry, anatomy, physiology, and microbiology. 

Studying starts in lecture when you’re learning everything for the first time. Ninety-nine percent of professors will have powerpoints. Print those bad boys out. I usually had them printed with 4 slides on each page to save ink and paper, and I took my notes there. I am very visual when it comes to studying: writing furiously as much as I can, highlighting and underlining the most important stuff. Chemistry, physiology, and microbio made me utilize different studying techniques, but anatomy was all memorization for me. 

Chemistry was really about doing problems over and over again until I understood the method. Remember that story where my professor got upset with me by finding the correct answer using an entirely different way? Yeah, that kind of scared me into just doing whatever way was taught. So he helped, but he made me lose confidence. If you want to read more about how much chemistry sucked lol, you can read that blog post here!

Chemistry has a lot of equations and methods to remember. I created a cheat sheet for my brain to use. My brain loves colors, shapes, or anything that helps the concepts stand out because that helps it stick in my brain. Here are a couple of cheat sheets I created below. It was still memorizing, but it was more difficult for me compared to anatomy.

 I took microbio over the summer. If you want to know more about summer classes, I have a post all about it and you can check it out over hither. Bloop. Blap. It was essentially a whole semester's worth of microbes, labs, exams, and lectures densely packed into 6 weeks. This is where I started to notice how well I can memorize things. I was also stressed and tired all the time, so my adrenaline and nerves pushed me enough to do very well in micro.

My savior for micro was flashcards. Those were my best friends in this class. I carried a fat stack of flashcards in a ziplock bag because of how many I had. My micro class focused a lot on definitions, and other important details. The process of rewriting the information on the flashcards itself helps me memorize. The flashcard helped me to be creative with whatever I had to know. I found fun little ways and songs to remember things. For example, one word in microbio had something along the lines of the word word theater, movie, or something like that, and the definition had something to do with a large number of microbes. I just remember associating a large number of microbes gathering around to watch a movie in a theater. I have no idea if it makes sense to you now but it made sense when I was studying lol. Little gimmicks like that helped me memorize masses of information. 
I liked flashcards for the repetitiveness and accessibility of it. I know there's Quizlets that I could’ve used to save my hand, but writing it out helped keep the information in my brain. I was also faster at writing than typing and there was just too much for me to put into the computer. Flashcards might not be your thing and that’s alright. It’s not going to be the same for everyone and some classes may be a good fit for flashcards, others might not be. No one is the same and we all learn differently.

Anatomy and physio. My favorite but most stressful pre-nursing schedule I ever had. I took on two science classes in my last semester before I applied to my nursing program. Curious on why I took two? You can read that blog here! Like I’ve mentioned before, anatomy and physio go hand-in-hand with information. You’re learning the structures of the body in anatomy and then learning how those body parts function in physiology. Anatomy and physiology, mainly anatomy, had a lot of drawing, labeling, pathways, diagrams, and coloring. I started to use flashcards because of my success with them from microbio, but it wasn’t enough so I mostly used my powerpoint slides. I reread those slides over and over again so much that I could visualize the slides and read them verbatim. It’s not photographic memory either because I had to look it over hundreds of times before I could get to that point. Anatomy was my strongest suit because of my memorization. Once everything was in my brain and I understood it, I was able to act it out and say the pathway out loud at the same time. WHat’s cool about anatomy is that you can study it all day because you're studying the body. As I went throughout my day I would look at my arm and say the muscles, when I was at the gym I would see someone work out their back or butt and say that muscle group. It was fun for me that I could say the names of specific body parts in everyday life.

My studying technique changed as I went through each science class but always had the same basis. I rewrote my notes, practiced equations, created mnemonics, wrote out pathways, labeled drawings, colored diagrams, and memorized the hell out of all of them. Everyone is different and you just need to find your strength and run with it. My way of studying can help someone and may not be right for someone else. Make it your way so you can learn and study to the best of your ability. That being said, I thought I knew how to study for anything by the end of pre-nursing but nursing school straight up said, “nope, you’re wrong.” 

Don’t worry, I’ll explain to you how nursing school is so different when it comes to studying. I found new tools, more resources, and different techniques with a different level of expectations for myself.

Nursing School

Have you ever seen those memes about nursing school tests where all the answers are right but you need to choose the BEST right answer? It’s so very true it hurts. It’s a different type of studying and test taking because you’re no longer studying just to memorize information, but really to understand the disease processes, complications, nursing processes, how and what to assess first and the next steps. I definitely had to make changes to my studying techniques through lots of trial and error. Let me tell you about one of those trials and errors…

Still a pre-nursing student, I was taking some nursing classes already that were open to all students to get ahead. At this point, I wasn’t accepted into the program yet and already regretted the choice of taking nursing classes. I didn’t regret it in the end because it took a load off when I first started nursing, but I definitely hated myself during the semester. 

I was so excited as a pre-nursing student taking an actual nursing class with actual nursing students. The classes were interesting, but damn they were hard not going to lie. I first started treating these two classes like any other class in the pre-nursing world. My first nursing exams were coming up. Luckily, they weren’t on the same day but were in the same week. I studied my ass off, memorized medication names, actions, classes, the effects, and side effects. My professor allowed us to record her lecture, so relistening to it was nice to make sure I got all my notes in line. I did my best to understand and retain every disease process, pathways, complications, signs and symptoms. I felt amazing; I did everything pre-nursing Maggie did and I had confidence I was going to ace both exams.

Every nursing exam is on the computer. I walked in and sat in the same chair where I took my TEAS for good luck because I’m hella superstitious like that. I answered all my questions to what I thought was the best of my ability; I clicked submit and waited for my grade. 

I got a C.

My first C on an exam ever in nursing school. 

I walked out of the computer room, sat in the hallway, and just cried. Balling my eyes out, feeling disappointed in myself thinking “I don’t understand. I studied exactly how I used to and barely passed my exam. How? Maybe I’m not meant to be a nurse.” The only solace I felt in that moment was when I found out that my group of friends did just as bad as me. We were all shocked at how bad we did even though we studied better than ever. 

After some reflection, it’s not that my studying was bad. I just studied the wrong way and thought the wrong way. The material was correct but the way the questions were asked was what determined your answer. For example, pre-nursing questions are like “how do you drive a car?”  and the pre-nursing answer is simple like, “push on the gas pedal,” while the nursing answers are like, “you put the key in the ignition, push on the brake pedal, and then start the car...oh and did you get your permit first? how?” It’s just more steps and processes to get to the answer or point. 

It’s not just about knowing the facts like in pre-nursing. Pre-nursing asked, “what's the normal range for a white blood cell count?” and you picked the number range that was correct and moved onto the next question. Nursing gives you a scenario of a patient and asks an entirely different question, but you have to know the range of a normal white blood cell count and other things to get to the best answer for the scenario. In other words, they test your knowledge indirectly through scenarios. If you get it right, that means you knew much more than that one fact to get there. That’s why doing well in nursing exams is much harder than picking the right answer out of memorization. It requires more critical thinking and contemplation.

Always think about the nursing progress. ADPIE. Assess, diagnose, plan, implement, and evaluate. Then there’s “select all that apply.” Those questions can go to hell because they suck. It could be that one of our five are right, none of them are right, or ALL of them are right. Literally the worst question and the best way to doubt yourself. The wording of the answers can be really tricky. Answers with the word always and never are usually always the wrong answer. Nothing is rarely always or never.

I did change the way I studied because I felt as if I wasn’t grasping the nursing process as well. Just using the powerpoint notes and my added notes weren’t enough, especially when some sections were not in an order that made sense in my brain. Like all neuro topics should be together, but some information bleeds into another process. So information was jumbled everywhere for me. I first used OneNote to organize my notes because my peers were also using it. It was helpful at first because I color coded everything, but then my lecture notes were becoming more complex than OneNote could handle. So I created diagrams, charts, and drawings onto paper, and still had my notes on the computer. I then used a blank paper and wrote down all my notes in a way that I understood them. Sometimes the powerpoint wouldn’t make sense to me because some sections belonged together but weren’t like that in the actual lecture. I essentially consolidated all my notes with every lecture into a “cheat sheet.” My notes would include chapters 9-13 all in one instead of having separate powerpoint notes that were just black and white.

TL;DR I consolidated all my chapter notes for an exam into one giant packet. I found these new highlighters that had more shade than your normal colors called Mildliner that act as a marker and highlighter that literally are amazing and I completely recommend it to all students.

Sidebar. Why are Mildliners great?

They are highlighter and markers in one. Typical highlights only have five colors and make your notes hella dark, like blue and pink. Blehhhh. They have so so many different colors that don’t make your notes too dark and the colors are adorable. I discovered them a little later in my nursing school career and wish I found them sooner but I recommend it to all students. You can buy them at target, amazon, or any arts and crafts store. I don’t mean to sound like an advertisement but if you need colors and visual pop ups, Mildliners are the way to go. Alrighty, back to the blog.

Here’s a link of what it looks like.

https://www.amazon.com/Zebra-Pen-Mildliner-Highlighter-Assorted/dp/B0752WWCTN

Everyone studies differently so my way may not work for you specifically. But here are some tips to help you study for any nursing exam:

1. Study groups are still a beneficial thing. Gather notes that you may have missed from peers and they can help explain concepts you may not understand as well and vice versa. Teaching is always the best way of learning. 

2. Open up a shared google document for notes. Nursing classes are about 3 hours long. Yeah you get breaks, but you’ll zone out once in a while. It’s smart to have a document where a group of students create notes together.

3. Record the lecture if you can. The majority of instructors let you record so take advantage of that. Especially when you’re careplanning during class. There’s no way you’re going to be able to take notes during that time.

4. The Pomodoro Method. This method lets you study or work for 25 minutes with a planned 5 minute break. I adjusted it to what I felt made me more productive. I studied for about an hour and took a 30 minute break. In those 30 minutes, I did anything that was not related to nursing. Use your break as a reward. There have been studies to show that it works because your brain cannot focus on one task for a long period of time. This method improves work productivity, focus, and overall makes studying or work less stressful.

The most important thing I learned and  what I want everyone to learn as they go through nursing school is that you don’t need the best grades to be the very best nurse that you can be. Getting the best grades do not matter once you’re in the program. Remember when I said C’s get degrees. Getting into the program was already hard enough and you’ve finally made it. There is no need to put so much pressure on yourself to get that A. Of course, always do your best and aim high but I want to encourage everyone to learn as much as they can. Grades do not determine your ability to be a nurse; don’t let it define you. It’s not an easy journey and it’s a big learning curve but you will eventually get there and be where you want to be. One exam at a time, one step at a time to get that RN license.

<3 Mags

thank you to my best friend for editing!