Ok, so you are in nursing school or graduate school. The teachers may not be in your field to teach you effectively for your specific career path, may not know how to teach, may not be approachable, etc. The point is that you are on your own and are overwhelmed with the amount of content you need to learn. Simultaneously, you are not sure you can trust your peers’ suggestions 100% as you notice there are cut-throat behaviors in your graduate program.
To get out of the weeds, you need to do two things: a) figure out how you learn efficiently and b) what information is relevant to the field you’re in.
I would say the best way to learn what information you need to know is to LISTEN to podcasts, WATCH youtube videos, on what was effective for people that came before you in your field specific graduate school, got the grade you wanted, and in the specific class you are taking. For instance, I WATCHED youtube videos about nursing students who successfully graduated from their nursing program and earned a grade of an A in my course of interest. Some YouTubers will title their videos “How I Earned an A in Medsurg.”
One particular video gave me positive feedback and good suggestions I could trust as this person was not directly competing with me and wanted to help as part of the nature of her youtube channel. The YouTuber resonated with me. In my particular case, she was also female and validating like me. Picking someone who has resonated with me helped me to really listen to what suggestions she offered and figure out what I can take from her advice and which of her suggestions may work best for me.
One day, LISTENING to a nursing podcast for about ten minutes on my way to school, I heard an acronym in the first few minutes that helped me consolidate the information I needed to retain to pass medsurg. The acronym stuck with me. It was called LATTE. It helped me to remember what to study in my endless lecture PowerPoint slides because it taught me to focus on what the condition looked like (L), how to assess the condition (A), which diagnostic tests to do for that condition (T), and how to educate the patient for each condition (E) that composes Medsurg.
Secondly, determining how you learn in your program, especially if it’s not supportive, may take time. When a program is not supportive like mine, it translated to having extra needless work that sapped my time to review for tests and professors that were disrespectful and unhelpful during office hours.
Onward to the solution of determining what review method is time-friendly and works with how you learn and the constraints of your program! You can journal or reflect on what worked for you in the past to help you remember. Then, slightly tweak that method as you go to reduce the time spent on content reading or familiarizing whilst getting the most impact/learning the most in the selected time frame.
After reflecting, as a learner, I know I am kinesthetic (use my hands), visuals and practice or questions help me the most in learning. If I have time, I can do all three. If I don’t like my graduate program, I realize that I needed to read summary books with key facts about the conditions I’m reviewing and do practice questions for that topic in the class. From practice questions with answers, I understand what I needed to know in terms of content as well as what the questions are testing for.
Additionally, I learned how to answer NCLEX/ HESI/Standardized test questions required for my program and licensing exams in my career path. Selecting activities that will maximize retention is important. This is because reading one chapter for one class would take 15 hours a week and I would not remember anything afterwards. And I have three classes with sub-classes that each have their own assignments. Doing questions, helps me learn the most content in a couple of hours or whatever time limit I set for myself for one class whilst effectively and efficiently reviewing the most important content.
Note: With other factors outside of our control, try to keep in mind it may take time to do trial and error to learn the way you need to retain material and allow yourself time to consolidate your review method into a shorter time frame. Essentially, it took me about 3 or 4 months in school to learn what method will be feasible in my program and work for me.
Recommendations:
- Straight A Nursing has a great podcast on Spotify. https://straightanursingstudent.com/podcast-2/
- Journaling is effective for creating your internal dialogue non judgementally and helps facilitate figuring out your study method.
- Be patient with and trust yourself. Things take time. And also ignore the temptation to keep changing your method drastically. Your method will likely evolve over time and you likely slightly change your method over time, not drastically.
- Don’t overthink the simplicity of the method. You may not feel like you are doing enough, but it will work especially if you realized this is something you’ve done already.