How to Study for Finals in Nursing School (The EASY Way!)

In this video, I'm gonna walk you through how to study for your final exams the easy way. No stress, no tears. This is the exact step by step process that I use to study for finals in nursing school. And it's also what helped me get straight A's. So hit that subscribe button and click the notification bell and let's do this. There are some really bad mistakes that I see nursing students make when studying for final exams. Like not giving yourself enough time and not studying. Staying organized. I always recommend that you give yourself two weeks to study to prepare for your nursing school finals. This should be enough time for you to learn everything that you need to learn and get all of your questions answered before that final. So don't put it off. Start early. Give yourself at least two weeks. The second mistake is not staying organized. So here's what happens as we go through nursing school. We're running around trying to figure out what's happening. And we're always playing, playing catch up. So our notes, our books, flashcards, everything ends up in random places. Like in your bed, in your car, on the dining room table, on the couch. So as you go through your term, do your best to keep all of your notes organized in one place. That will make it way easier for you to find everything you need when it comes to finals time. So now let's dive into the step by step process for exactly how to study for finals. I've also put these steps in a free nursing school study checklist for you. I will put that link down below in the description for you to get it. Trust me, it's amazing friend, you do not want to miss out. So make sure to download that. And I also want to do something fun and different today. Take a screenshot of this video with your phone and post it onto your Instagram stories and tag me in it. Nursingsos. I love resharing your stories on Instagram. So take a screenshot really quick and post that up. Now let's get into the good stuff. Now the first step is to collect all of your notes. Hopefully you've kept them organized like we just talked about. But if you're like me and your house is kind of a mess, chances are you need to do some organizing. So go all around your house, your car, your couch, your desk, anywhere your class notes and textbooks might be hiding and collect it all. You want to get it all in one place for when you sit down to study. And once you've gotten all of your notes in one place, the second step is to organize it all into what I call packets. Now divide your notes up by topic and use a binder clip or a paper clip to keep each packet separate. Now let me show you how I do this. So just go all around your house and find all of your notes, all of your binders for class, all of your textbooks. Gosh, I got a lot of stuff. Textbooks, everything. Find everything that you have used throughout the term to study and collect it all into one place. And then what you're going to do now that everything is in one place, you're going to go through all of your notes and you'll divide them up by topics. So like if you were studying cardiac, you would find all of the notes, all the flashcards of everything that relates to cardiac as a topic. And then you will use binder clips or paper clips. Paper clips I always found was too small. Then there's these little binder clips here. Or you can go with these like massive ones. I like the massive ones. Cause there's so many notes in nursing school. And just binder clip them all together. So by each topic, separate all of your notes by topic. So if this was like cardiac, that'd be good. And then you would do another one for like your other topics like respiratory or endocrine or whatever. If you're in fundamentals, you know, you could divide them up by like studying the nursing process or ABGs. All the things. Pharmacology. So divide all of your notes up by topic. So now that you've got all of your packets all nice and organized, the next step is to go through each packet one at a time and highlight only the things you don't know or you can't remember. You're going through all of your notes from your term, so you will know some things already. But don't be shocked if you don't know a whole lot. That is 12 totally normal. Don't give up. That's why we're going it this way. You will know it all by the end of this process. So stay with me. Now let's head on over to my living room and I will show you how I highlight everything. But before we head over there, I want to give a shout out to bridget for our YouTube comment of the week. Bridget said you've been a blessing to me. I feel like we share the same personalities and passion for nursing. Thanks for all you do and know there's someone out there looking up to you. Xoxo. Thank you so much, Bridget for your super sweet comment. That is so nice. You are so amazing. I love creating these videos for you and I'm so glad that you love them, my friend. And keep those comments coming. They really, really help me get to know you more. And tell me what topics you're most interested in. So tell me your suggestions for future videos. I. I would love to know what you want to see next. So now that you've got all of your notes divided up by topic, you'll have like multiple packets just like this one. Like multiple, like a lot. Don't be surprised how many you have. The point is to divide them up into smaller bite sized pieces so you're not studying a gazillion things at once. You do one packet at a time. It just makes it so much more manageable for you to study. So you'll go through one packet at a time and you'll undo the binder clip. And I already did it for my notes in school because this is exactly how I studied. But you'll go through and you'll highlight the things that you don't yet know. So you see all my highlights here. As I went through nursing school and I was studying for finals, so all of my notes that I highlighted, you'll just go through the things that you can't remember. Just highlight the things that you don't know or can't remember from as you study throughout the term. Now do not be surprised. Like I said, you might not know a whole lot or remember a whole lot. And that's totally okay. Like look how much I highlighted on this thing. It's no problem at all. You're just going through highlighting the things that you don't know or don't remember. And you're gonna know it by the end of this process, I promise you. So give yourself grace and just highlight the things that you don't know and don't judge yourself as you go. Just highlight the things that you don't know. Alright, so by now you've organized all of your notes, broken them up by topic into smaller bite sized packets and you've gone through one packet at a time and highlighted the information that you don't know or can't remember. Now you're going to go through each packet again and write out everything you highlighted onto a separate sheet of paper. Don't write things that you already know because you don't need to study that you already know it. So don't waste your time with that. Only write things that you highlight. So let me show you how to do this. So now that you've highlighted everything in all of your packets. All of them. All of the lovely Mongo packets that you've got. Then you will take your highlighted notes. Only the highlighted things. Only the things that you highlighted, because the things that you didn't highlight, you already know, remember? So the things that you highlighted are the things that you don't yet know. Those are the things. All of the highlights here, all of the everything that you highlighted, you're going to copy onto a separate sheet of paper, a blank piece of paper. So just literally rewrite your notes. Rewrite your notes onto a blank sheet of paper. And like I said, don't waste your time writing things that you already know. Only focus on the things that you highlighted, which are the things that you don't yet know. You don't want to waste your time studying and restudying the things that you already know. That's just a waste of time. So you want to focus on the things that you don't yet know. Then you'll only focus on studying the information you wrote on that separate sheet of paper, since those are all the things that you don't know yet and need to learn. So focus your study time on those things. If you're a nursing SOS member, you have a whole library of videos that you can watch to help you study. Just log into your dashboard and click. Click on any of the topics that you need to learn about for nursing school. It's all there for you whenever you need it. And if you're not a nursing SOS member, you are really missing out, my friend. It is so stinking amazing. So make sure to get on the waitlist to be notified when enrollment opens again. I'll put that link down below in the description for the waitlist for you to check it out. Then after you're done with that rewriting all of your notes, you're going to study only the things on this sheet of paper. And, well, could be multiple sheets of paper. Don't judge yourself if it is. It might be multiple sheets of paper. That's totally fine, my friend. Don't think anything of it. Just focus on studying these pieces of paper, because those are the things that you don't yet know. So then once you've studied that for a bit, you'll repeat this process and highlight the things that you don't know again. So take those sheets of paper that you transferred your notes onto, go through and highlight the information and you still don't know, and then copy it onto a new sheet of paper. So then once you're done studying all the things on these sheets of paper here. Then you'll kind of repeat the process. You will re highlight everything that you still don't know, can't really remember, still want to study. And then you'll get a brand new sheet of paper or papers. It's fine, totally fine. If it's multiple papers, then you'll rewrite it again onto a brand new sheet of paper. The process of writing, writing, studying and then rewriting your notes is really going to help you commit it all to memory. Once you do this process, you will be amazed at how much you know by the time your finals roll around. So go through and highlight the things you don't know, copy the things you highlighted onto a separate sheet of paper and then focus on studying only those things. Then once you've studied it a bit, highlight the things you still don't know and rewrite them on a new sheet of paper. Eventually you'll just end up with one page of notes, or maybe even no notes at all. In the next video, I'm going to walk you through how to critically think in nursing school to make studying for finals even more of a breeze. So don't miss out on that video. And don't forget to snag your free nursing school study checklist. It is the bomb my friend. You are going to love it. The link is in the description below and make sure to like comment and subscribe and share this video to show your support of our channel and tell the world that you want to become an amazing nurse. Now click on one of these videos right over here so you can keep rocking nursing school and go become the nurse that God created only you to be. And I will catch you in the next video. My friends. Take care.