Nursing educator Christina Rafano walks through a five-step study system: gather all your notes and materials, organize them into seven topic packets, highlight only what you don't know, rewrite those gaps on fresh paper, then repeat daily until your study pile shrinks to just the unknowns.
In this video, I'm going to give you five action steps to help you rock your nursing school finals. Hey there, friend. My name is Christina Rafano from nursingschoolofsuccess.com and today we are talking about how you can rock your final exams. One of our email subscribers, Haley, actually got the highest grade in her class, a 98%, from following our study tips. And I want that to be you. So today we're going to walk you through five steps to help you study for your finals. And be sure to watch until the very end of the video, because, of course, I've got a free cheat sheet to give to you to help you rock your finals. Let's do it. So step number one is to go all around your house, your car, your locker, if you have one at school, and your kitchen table and collect all of your notes from throughout the term. Seriously, do not forget your kitchen table. You know you've got like a gazillion nursing school things piled up there, right? I know that. I did. So go through all of it and collect all of your class notes, your PowerPoints, your study guides, the modules, anything else that you have. Just collect it all and get it all into one place. Now step two is to organize it all so you can do this a couple of different ways. What I like to do, actually, is to organize all of my notes by week of the term. So I would literally take all of my notes and organize them by week of the term. So I'd say, okay, these notes are from week one, these are from week two, and so on. This worked really well for my school because we would usually cover the different topics in each of the different weeks. So actually, by dividing my notes up by week, I was also dividing them up by topic. But if your nursing school doesn't do that, you can definitely separate your notes by topic if you prefer. So just make sure that you have at least seven or so different packets of notes. So there's. So once you've collected all of your notes from the whole term, you'll separate them by week of the term or topic and you'll put them all into individual packets. So each packet represents one week of the term or one topic. And now step number three is to bust out that highlighter and to use it. And here's the best way to do this. Take one packet at a time and highlight only the information that you don't know and that you don't remember learning. It might be a lot in the beginning, but don't worry, friend, you'll know it by the end of this. So go through each one of your packets one at a time and highlight what you don't remember. Now here's a sticking point that I know you might get hung up on. When you go through these packets, you're going to feel like you don't know anything. But it's not true, my friend. You know more than you think you do. Trust yourself. You know your stuff. You don't give yourself enough credit for how smart you are. You are in nursing school right now. And you are in nursing school for a reason. You care about becoming the best nurse you can be. And I know that you know more than you realize. So believe in yourself and your knowledge. So as you go through this process, trust what you know. If you already know something in one of the packets, skip it. Don't highlight it. It's a waste of your time to study something that you already know. So please trust yourself. You. You know more than you think you do. Alright, now let's move on to step number four. After you've separated all your notes into packets and highlighted everything that you don't know in each one of those packets, take one packet at a time and rewrite everything you highlighted onto a separate sheet of paper. This way, you won't be sifting through a huge pile of notes to study. You'll be studying from a fresh piece of paper. And it's just. It's just a lot less stressful and a lot less paper to sift through. So rewrite everything you've highlighted onto a separate sheet of paper. And again, do not worry about the things that you already know and that you didn't highlight. You already know that stuff, so you don't need to waste your time because you already know it. Seriously, you're amazing. Trust yourself. And that brings us to step number five, which is to study those new pieces of paper that you transferred your notes onto. And not only that, but you need to study them every single day. Study every day will actually help you retain that information so you're not cramming for your exam. You'll be studying a little bit every day, and you'll be a lot more prepared for your nursing school finals. So here is how this goes. Every day, you will begin studying, highlight again what information you don't remember, and again, you will transfer only that information that you don't know onto a separate sheet of paper. So every day, you're pulling out your notes, you're highlighting your notes that you don't of the things that you don't remember you're rewriting all of the stuff that you highlighted onto a new sheet of paper and then you're going to study only that information. That way you're not wasting your time studying things that you already know. This is going to save you a ton of time. So go through and highlight what you don't know. Rewrite all of that information onto a separate sheet of paper, and then study only that. As you do this every day, that amount of information that you need to study will decrease every single day because you're retaining more and more of it. So that is your five step process for studying for final exams. Collect all of your notes. Organize your notes by week or by topic. Highlight the information that you do not know. Rewrite everything that you've highlighted onto a fresh new sheet of paper and study only that information that you rewrote. And then just repeat that process every single day of highlighting, rewriting and studying. Eventually you will end up with just 1/2 sheet of paper, maybe or less by the time your final rolls around because you've already learned it all. So that is your five step process for studying for your finals. I highly recommend that you start this process early. Right? You know, nursing school is no walk in the park. And studying for finals won't be either. Don't worry, you've got vacation to look forward to so you can push through just a little bit longer, friend. You can do it. I know you can. And of course we have a free cheat sheet for you to help you get organized and study for your finals. I'll put a link to that in the description below for you to download. And of course, if you liked this video, hit that like button. Share it with your friends that need help with their final exams too. And of course, be sure to subscribe and hit that bell so you never miss a video now. Thank you so much for being here, friend. Go become the nurse that God created only you to be. And I'll catch you right back here next time on the Nursing School show. Take care of.
