In this video, nursing educator Christina Rafano outlines three common mental traps that cause nursing students to study ineffectively: the Comparison Trap (trying to mimic others' study methods despite differing life circumstances and learning styles), the Perfection Trap (pressuring oneself to be flawless in lectures, labs, clinicals, and study plans, which leads to avoidance and burnout), and the Failure Trap (letting fear of failure prevent effort, creating a vicious cycle of under‑preparation and poorer outcomes). She explains how each trap stems from an underlying fear, illustrates each with personal anecdotes, and offers practical counter‑measures: tailor study methods to one’s own schedule and learning modality (visual, auditory, etc.), aim for “good enough” rather than perfect, and confront fear by consistently doing one’s best and trusting God for the outcome. The video blends instructional advice with faith‑based encouragement, urging viewers to adopt self‑discipline, focus on controllable actions, and let divine guidance handle the rest. It ends with a call‑to‑action to watch related test‑taking tips, like, comment, and subscribe.
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Hey there, my friend. My name is Christina Rafano from nursingsos.com and in this video today, we are talking about some of the top reasons that we study wrong in nursing school. These are huge traps that I see all the time with nursing students. And I know that I fell for every single one of these two when I was in nursing school, but I don't want you to fall for them. So we're going to walk through what these steps, study traps are, and how you can avoid them so that you can pass your exams. So hit that subscribe button and click the notification bell, and let's dive in. Now, there are three big traps that we're going to talk about in this video. The first one is what I like to call the comparison trap. Trying to be like everyone else. So this can really pop up in all sorts of different ways. Probably one of the biggest ones that I see I fell for and that I see other nursing students falling for is that, like, some. Someone else who's doing really well in nursing school is studying this particular way, which means that I need to study that particular way. So you kind of look around your class and say, like, this person's doing really, really well. This person's doing really, really well. I need to study exactly how they're studying. Now, this can be a good thing. We do want to make sure that we are following what, you know, best practice would be, or, you know, following really good advice and wisdom. That is not the point here. The point here is that you're trying to fit yourself into a mold that is working for someone else, but doesn't necessarily work for you. So let's take an example here. Something that I know that happened to me in nursing school is, like, when. When I would see someone else studying, like, so, so much. Okay, so here's the thing about nursing school. Especially if you have a different structure to your life than other students, you're going to have a mix of students in your class. You could have students who are just right out of high school, and then students who are, you know, in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, who have a family and children and a job. And so I kind of more fell into that category. But I was trying to study as if I didn't have a job, didn't have a husband because I was trying to study for 24 hours a day as if I was right out of high school. That is not the best way, was not the best way for me to study. So you can't look around and try to almost pigeonhole yourself into studying in a way that is might. Might work really well for someone, but doesn't fit how you study or how your life is structured. If you have a job and you're trying to work during nursing school, you are not able to study for 80 hours a week like someone who might not have a job and isn't working during nursing school. Right. In the same way, if you find that you are a very, like, visual learner, then you need to study more visually. For me, I'm an auditory learner and I really, really retain information well when I hear it. Like, I could listen to podcasts all day long. And I just, I don't know for some reason that just I remember it. I remember things so much easier when it's audio, but some people learn really, really well when it's visual. So. So you have to make sure that you are learning how you best learn and not trying to, like I said, pigeonhole yourself into a fitting into a mold that might work for someone else, but doesn't work for you. So if someone is listening to a whole lot of lecture recordings from class, but that doesn't necessarily work for you, then that's fine. You don't have to do it that way. So make sure that you're studying the way that you. That works best for you and not just trying to compare yourself to other people and falling into that comparison trap of trying to do what everyone else is doing just because it seems to be working for them, but it might not work best for you. Now, the next trap that I see all the time, again, I fall for this one too, is what I like to call the perfection trap. So trying to be perfect, all the things in nursing school, trying to be perfect at your lecture exams, at skills lab, at clinical, at all of the things that you need to do, you want to get all of it perfect. And I get it. Like, we want to be good nurses, right? You want to be a good nursing student, you want to pass your exams, you want to pass your care plans and your skills lab and all your classes. I get that. But the problem here is when you put so much pressure on yourself to try to be perfect and try to do all the things perfectly, study in the perfect way, do all the skills in the perfect way, and go to clinical and have the most perfect responses with all of your patients, like, it's just not possible, that's a huge burden to carry on your shoulders. That is a huge, huge weight that you don't have to have, my friend. I tell nursing students all the time, especially when you're just starting nursing school, you don't have to know everything. You are not expected to know everything, my friend. It's not like you get your acceptance letter and you go out to your mailbox and you open it up and all of a sudden, like, glitter falls from the sky and you know everything. Obviously, that's not how it works, right? Like, that would be so cool. Like, that would be so cool if that was the reality. Like, you just go get your acceptance letter, and then all of a sudden you know how to critically think about all the things. That's not how it works, right? So you cannot be expected to be perfect at everything. Don't expect yourself to be perfect at everything. I am not expecting you to be perfect at everything. Your instructors are not expecting you to be perfect at everything, even though it sometimes feels like they are. They know, my friend, you are a nursing student. You are here to learn. So please, please, please, do not put off studying just because you're scared it won't be perfect. Do not put off writing your care plan just because you're scared it won't be perfect. Don't be afraid to walk into your patient's room because you're scared it won't be perfect. Okay? So so much of this is just like, all of these kind of just our brains telling us, like, ooh, I'm not going to be really good at this, so I'm not even going to try. That's almost like what's happening here is that when you are scared that it's not going to be good or it's not going to be perfect, that we don't even try in the first place. And that is bad news for nursing school when you have a thousand care plans to write and a whole bunch of patients to talk to and a whole bunch of exams to study for, right? So let's go for less than perfect. That should be our goal. We don't want perfection. That is not the goal, okay? Let's just, like, erase that from our minds. Perfection is not the goal. We just want to do really good work every single day and do the best that we can, and that is going to be enough. As long as you are doing the best that you can every day, that's all you can do, my friend. Right? That's all you can do. And then we just have to leave it there and let God take over the rest, right? That's how it works. You cannot be perfect at everything. Preaching to the choir here. Like, this is something that I need to hear all the time as well, because I really fall into this trap where it's like, oh, I don't want to do it because I really want it to be perfect, so I don't even try. Totally, totally fall for that all the time, but I don't want you to fall for that one in nursing school. Now, this next trap kind of goes along with the perfection trap. And this is the failure trap. It's kind of a cousin to the perfection trap. So with the fear of failure trap, the failure trap is when we tell ourselves that we are scared to fail. We don't want to fail something, so we're not even going to try. Now I did this and I still do this. Seriously, with so many things, I find myself being like, oh, I don't want to fail, so I'm not even gonna try. See, this kind of goes along with a perfection trap, but what we're telling ourselves is very different. So this is really, really important to keep an eye on in your brain, in your own mind, to make sure you're not falling for this one. Because it's so, so common. So the thing here about this failure trap is that when we are scared that we're gonna fail an exam or totally our skills check off test like I did a million times, or we're going to totally fail in front of our instructor at clinical, then oftentimes what we will do is not practice our skills or not study or just not do the thing we need to do because we are scared of failing. Failing. That's how this failure trap works. So if you're scared of failing an exam, it's very likely that you're not going to study as hard or as well for, for that exam just because you have so much fear of failure. So we just. It's almost like you don't want to put yourself out there and try your hardest. Because then it's like, I don't know. This is true for me at least if, if you almost don't want to try your hardest, because then if you don't pass or if you fail your exam, then it's like, well, I didn't really try my hardest anyway, so it doesn't really count. Not the case, Right? We want to put in our best work. We want to do the best we, in order to try our hardest to succeed. Because if you don't, then your risk of failing the exam goes up. Right? So if you are, it's almost like this vicious cycle. If you're scared of failing your exam, Then you're not going to study as well for your exam and then you are more likely to fail that exam. So it's like this vicious cycle. So we want to be trying our best, putting our best foot forward every day and doing our best work so that we can obviously have that potential of passing. Like we said in the previous tip, that when you show up and do your best work, that's all you can do. And then God will take over the rest from there. That's how it works. So really what it comes down to here is fear. Did you notice that that's kind of the theme throughout this whole thing. The comparison trap, the perfection trap and the failure trap. Really it all stems from fear. So what is that? Like we are just so scared of all of these things. We compare ourselves to others, we try to be perfect and we try avoid failure. All of that really stems from that root cause of fear. But what does the Bible say about fear? God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love and of a sound mind. And some translations say self control or discipline there. And I actually really like the one discipline, like self discipline. That is the spirit that God gave us. He does not give us a spirit of fear, but of discipline of a sound mind. And these are things that we need to really take up every day. You know, like we take up our cross every day. So we want to have that self discipline where we are putting in the work and letting God take over the rest. Not being fearful of really even the outcome. Because that's out of our hands, my friend. Right, like okay, seriously preach into the choir here. Like this is a problem for me too. Seriously, I need to hear this just as much as you do. So we don't want to live in fear. We want to really put in our best foot forward every day, put in the work every single day and let God take over the rest. We cannot control that. We cannot control the outcome. But we can control the things that we do. The hard work that we put into. Not comparing ourselves to others, not falling for that perfection trap, not trying to be perfect and not avoiding things just because we're afraid of failure. That is not healthy. Telling myself this. It's not healthy when we do those things right. We just want to put in our best work and let God take over the rest. Now if you want a breakdown of my best test taking tips, definitely check out this video here and hit that like button. Write love in the comments below. Because that is just what we do around here, my friend. And of course. Make sure you subscribe to my channel and hit that notification bell so you never miss a video. And as always, my friend, go become the nurse that God created only you to be. And I will see you over there in that next video.
