Nursing school is undoubtedly a challenging endeavor. While the profession is personally rewarding, the journey to securing a respected position is far from stress-free. Balancing schoolwork with home responsibilities can often feel overwhelming.
Moreover, some nurses pursue higher education degrees while working part-time, making it even more difficult to maintain a work-life balance. However, with the right strategies in place, every challenge is manageable.
Take a deep breath, plan your schedule, and gather useful study tips to conquer your exams. Here are some valuable pointers to make your nursing education journey more manageable:
1. Design a schedule and stick to it
Scheduling is key to nursing school; with a well-planned schedule, you can complete other commitments in life, take out fixed time for studying, and keep up with deadlines. A predetermined schedule is also a good way to stay accountable.
Before you dive into your studies, determine a schedule that best suits your lifestyle and responsibilities. Plan out when you intend to study and what time you will give to your family and other responsibilities. When planning this out, remember that your study time should be when your attention span and concentration are at their best. Quality, not quantity, is the goal!
One clever way of making your schedule more flexible is to opt for online degree programs over on-campus courses. Many affordable RN to BSN online programs allow for highly flexible study hours.
2. Make sure your study environment is productive
Where you study is almost as important as how you study. For many, much of their study time is spent at home, and often it is difficult to find the right place to study. As a nursing student, you must study smarter, not harder, and ensuring a productive work environment is a perfect way to complete more work in less time.
The ideal study setting has no clutter, proper lighting, preferably next to a window, limited sounds, and no distractions.
Furthermore, it’s best to avoid talkative people who may distract you from your work. Unfortunately, not everyone can find a quiet room to study in. When you cannot avoid background noise, it will help to have ambient noise playing on your headphones.
Where you sit is also important; avoid beds, armchairs, or couches because too much comfort can make you sleepy.
3. Figure out your learning style
You can guarantee effective learning only when you are using the right strategy. There is no one size fits all approach to learning; the best learning approach for you might not be ideal for your friend. Broadly, there are four main learning styles, visual, auditory, tactile, and reading/writing.
Visual learners learn best from infographics and images. Auditory learners benefit from reading aloud as their auditory memory is strongest. Tactile learners require hands-on practice and experience for learning, and reading/writing learners benefit from written material and text-heavy resources.
4. Maintain the right posture
The correct posture is sitting straight or resting your back on the chair. You can place a cushion or pillow if the chair doesn’t support your back. Also, ensure your chair isn’t so high that your feet don’t touch the floor.
Your table should be high enough that you don’t have to bend your neck too much to look at your book. Leaning and slouching can lead to neck pain and back ache. If you use a computer or laptop, ensure it is at least an arm’s length away to avoid strain.
5. Avoid cramming
For many of us, the motivation to study only comes when exams are right ahead, and we are on a tight schedule. Many people don’t know that cramming before exams is counterproductive. When you have a lot of material to prepare at the last minute, it results in inevitable anxiety, stress, and frustration. This reduces efficiency. It also promotes sleep deprivation that lowers focus the next day.
Another major long-term disadvantage of cramming is that you only get to rote-learn the study material rather than practice concepts or think critically. As a result, the learned material is retained until after the exams, and no long-term benefit is obtained.
Research proves that spaced-out study sessions and frequent revisions are most effective in enhancing long-term memory. Spacing out study sessions gives your brain time to practice the learned material consciously and unconsciously.
6. Join a study group
As the famous adage goes, teamwork makes the dream work. Just like registered nurses, nursing students perform best with the support of others. Look for people you are comfortable with and with a similar study style.
Group study can help you improve your study, allow you to share your stresses with others who understand, and pool resources. Sometimes it helps to have all members dig into different topics and share their findings, saving everyone valuable time.
Study groups are also an effective way of holding each other accountable and providing explicit or implicit motivation to study.
7. Use concept maps
Traditional note-taking, highlighting, and rewriting can get boring and is less effective than more logical ways of note-taking. Concept maps are an easy, strategic, and fun way of learning new concepts. A concept map makes use of visual representations to display interrelated information. It can be in tables, flowcharts, Venn diagrams, timelines, etc.
If you are a visual learner, you will find concept maps helpful in retaining information. This strategy is effective as you can chunk information in varying levels and see the big picture. When you understand the bigger picture, the smaller details become easier to remember. These maps are most effective when you are learning interrelated information.
Your concept maps will use keywords, so when you practice them, elaborate out loud or in your mind the concept of each keyword. You can also add information on the map and list examples.
The next time you take class notes or practice for an upcoming exam, use concept maps instead of traditional note-taking.
However, with the right strategies in place, every challenge is manageable. The online format of the nursing education program at the University of Texas at Arlington, as detailed on the page https://academicpartnerships.uta.edu/healthcare-nursing-online-programs/msn/education/, offers valuable flexibility for working nurses pursuing higher education simultaneously.
Final words
Nursing education can truly be a challenge if you don’t know how to go about things and juggle the responsibilities. Remember to create a specific schedule and stick to it, figure out your learning style, join a study group, and use concept maps. You will surely ace your degree program with the right scheduling method, learning environment, and clever studying strategy.
