Nursing School ASK ME ANYTHING!!

Okay. Yep, sounds good.

Welcome.

Hello everyone. Welcome to the nursing school show. Christina.

Ask me anything.

Matthew. We're here for asking us anything. Ask me anything. Ask Christina anything. Ask any of us anything nursing school related and we will answer them.

Ask each other anything.

Ask each other anything. We welcome. Happy Monday, Happy December, Happy time. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

And it's only like two weeks until Christmas.

Yes and a half.

Right? Because Christmas is what, on a Friday this year?

I do not know.

I think it's a Friday.

Okay. Yeah, yeah. Seems like December will go fast. We will see. We will see. How. How about you guys? Does it feel like November? December, holidays going fast, going slow. How is it going for everyone?

She just passed her semester.

Hooray.

Congratulations for Chelsea.

Congratulations. Congratulation and thank you for joining us for a nursing school ask me anything.

Hi Melissa. Welcome.

We answer nursing school related questions.

Yeah.

All right. So.

All right, let's do it.

Shall we dive into it? If anyone has a question, go ahead and put them in the comments below and we will go through them and answer some that we. We do want to try and answer the ones that will be helpful to as many people on as possible. We want to help as many people as possible while on these AMAs. So we are going to get to it. Let me see, what do we want to start with? Let's just start with Med Surge. Okay, let's just dive into it. Med Surge. Um, I do have questions from previous AMAs as well that I also refer back to while you guys are putting in some questions too. So let's start with the Med surg one. How do I get through all the content of Med Surge class to be successful? My instructor tells me to do NCLEX questions but I feel that is not effective.

This is such a good question like NCLEX questions. Can you guys let me know if you feel feel like practice questions in nursing school? Do they help you? Let me know what should we do if they help you. Can you like do a smiley face or something? If they don't help you do like a sad face emoji.

There we go.

That sounds right.

For those that are new to us in our AMAs, we are a very interactive group of people here. I really love our community and the people that are commenting too. People that comment while we're on this also help each other out. So we're a very interactive community. So we ask for emojis and ask questions. So feel free to respond.

This is a two way conversation.

This is a two way. Yeah, two or More way conversation.

There you go. There's lots of happy faces, so that's good. Oh, okay. October you say sad face, so maybe not good then. Here's the thing with practice quote questions that I don't think most nursing students notice or understand, and that is that they are not necessarily there to help you learn the content. There's another reason for them and that is to get used to how they are written and how the NCLEX tests. So oftentimes nursing students will think, oh, I have to find this test bank somewhere in nursing school, like in a textbook or online or something that will help me learn the content for my next med surg class or my next fundamentals class or critical care or OB or pediatrics or whatever it is. That's what most nursing students say, right? You need to find this test bank, this book of practice questions, NCLEX questions, and that will help me learn the content. That's only one piece of it. The other piece, and perhaps even the most important piece of practice questions during nursing school is the more practice questions you do, the better you are going to get at understanding how those questions are written and what the correct answer answer is. That's it. So the more that you practice NCLEX practice questions, NCLEX style questions, the better you are going to get at getting more comfortable with how they're worded, figuring out some nuances and hacks for them, and then just overall increasing your confidence. Like I'm telling you right now, telling you right now, friend, which you've probably experienced the first time you do a batch or a series of NCLEX practice questions, it's going to be like, right? It's not going to be pretty. It's not going to be pretty. Like you might get too correct maybe depending on how many you do. But the more that you practice, the more that you do them, the more that you practice and keep going, the better you are going to get. So yes, content is part of it, but the bigger part, in my opinion, is just practicing to get the wording down to figure out how they're written, what they're asking for, the nuances to them, all of those things. You don't want to get to a nursing school exam for the first time or the 30th time on your nursing school exam and just not understand what they're asking. That's not helpful, right? So the more that we can practice beforehand, the better off you're going to be. Does that make sense?

So yeah. So the, the NCLEX questions are Just to. Yeah. Get you, get you prepared for how they ask questions. Because it is different from what I've heard. I've not a nurse. Not a nurse right here. But yes, I've heard from this one who is a nurse that yes, NCLEX exams questions are different. So yeah, a lot of that, A lot of the NCLEX style questions is to get you prepped for the experience, not necessarily for the content, Correct?

Absolutely.

Okay.

Yep. If you guys do not know or haven't gotten this yet, we do have the nursing school study system which walks you through step by step how to study in nursing school. And also on page. I did this last time. I should have this page memorized by now. 38 of the nursing school study system walks you through test taking strategies, how to answer NCLEX practice questions. NCLEX style questions walks you through that. So nursingschoolofsuccess.com study system if you're a nursing SOS member, please do not buy this. It is in the membership community for free for you under the. It's still under the watch this first course, right?

It is under that. Watch this Watch first.

Watch this first. So if you are interesting as this member, go to your dashboard and click on the watch this first course. It'll be like the first one that's there. Watch this. It says watch this first. It's got a picture of me says watch this first. Watch that first. And then it'll have the study system in there for you to download.

Monique was also asking how can I join John? How can I join the online community? So we just closed enrollment. We were open for enrollment all last week. We usually open for launches one one week at a time and a few times a year. A few times a year. So we are currently closed. So the best place to go is just go to nursing school of success.com join. There will be a sign up for a wait list.

Yep.

And go ahead and join that waitlist and you will be the first to know when we open again.

There you go. Sweet. Hey everyone on Facebook, can you tell me are you watching on our Facebook page or are you watching inside the membership community Facebook group? Because we are trying to. Nicole is trying to do a different thing where we have like a watch party and I'm not sure what she's doing today. I think she was gonna like add herself to something and try to try to like get this live video inside the Facebook group. So can you tell us on Facebook, are you watching Insider membership community or on the Facebook page areatta Facebook page. Okay. I hope that it worked inside. Last time we did this on as Matthew's getting questions. I will just talk. Last time on Wednesday when we tried the watch party, if you were a nursing SOS member, you probably saw it in the Facebook group. In the members Facebook group. But unfortunately we weren't able to see your comments. So that was a bummer. So hopefully we'll figure out and get that fixed.

Perfect.

Neil, Denise, Hello.

So everybody back to, back to the first question though. So that, that is the reason for nclex style questions. But just in general, just kind of going back to their first part of the question is just med surg and how to study for med surgical content for med surgical. Let's see. Yes, yesina just asked that also. So I just want to circle back on around on that. How to prepare for med surg.

Sweet. Let's jam on it. So did you know that there are only four key things that you need to understand for your med surg class? Only four friends. I know that your instructors are going to tell you that you need to read every single page in all of your textbooks. Do you guys see those textbooks? Textbooks back there you're gonna have time to read.

There's a few back there. There's a few.

That's like a third of the textbooks I had in nursing school. A third half, maybe just a lot, right? I cannot read all of that. There's only four key things that you have to know in med surg. You have to focus on the pathophysiology. You've got to understand what is going on with the disorder. Second, you have to understand the signs and symptoms. Third, nursing assessment. What are you going to assess for your patient? The fourth is nursing interventions. What are you going to do about it? Those are the four key things that you have to focus on in med surg. Pathophysiology, signs and symptoms, nursing assessment, and nursing interventions. If you think back, who has had. Raise your hand. There's. There's raising hand emojis, right? There's raising hands emojis. Raise your hand if you've had a med surg test already. Raise your hand if you've had a med surg test already. If you've had a med surg exam, raise your hand, right? There's hands emojis, right?

Yeah.

Or just give me an emoji. Give me a unicorn.

Any kind of emoji, Give me a unicorn.

The thing is, is when you take med surg exams, that is what they're going to test you On. They're going to test you on what are the signs and symptoms that you could expect to see? They're going to test you on. What are you going to assess for? They're going to test you on nursing interventions. What are you going to do about it? Those of you, we're getting a lot of hand raises. Those of you who have taken a med surg exam, how often, how often do you get a question that says, what is your first, what's the first thing you're going to do? What is your initial action? What is your first priority? Like, how many questions do you get? A lot. Right. That is going to be an assessment question. It's going to be an intervention question. What is the first thing you're going to do? Right. They're testing you on nursing interventions and nursing assessment. How often do we get a SATA question that says, here is a patient case scenario, like here's, here's your patient here. What signs and symptoms would you expect to see? C sign and symptom question. Right. Right. You're going to want to focus on these four key areas. Pathophysiology, signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions. And that is why those are the four key areas that you're going to be tested on. Those are really the only four things you got to know for nursing patho signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions. Now, the thing is, you're not necessarily going to be tested directly on the pathophysiology. You are going to be. What's the word? Adjacently tested on the pathophysiology. The pathophysiology is what is happening with the patient. You have to understand that first before you can understand the signs and symptoms, the nursing assessment and the nursing interventions. If you understand the pathophysiology and you understand what's going on in the patient's body, learning the signs and symptoms, the assessment and the interventions that you're going to do become much easier. But it starts with the patho. There you go. That is on. Let me find the page. That is on page 34 through 35 of the Nursing school study system. There you go.

Where is it? Where is it?

Let me put it up there. Nursing schoolofsuccess.com forward/study system.

Oh, there it is.

It's on page 34. If you already have the study system walked you through how to study in.

MedSearch, go ahead and post that in YouTube as well. That will get you to the study, the study system. So that is basically what Christina is reading. Off of it is our step by step guide for getting through nursing school. So we have that PDF for you. It's kind of the DIY experience of the membership community. So I hear from Annie and a couple different people. I'm not sure if it's the same person that's just jumping around to Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. But asking in, in relation to NCLEX again, what we were talking about a little bit earlier, is there a good website or book to practice these NCLEX style questions?

Yes, our top resource. Well, I'm going to give you two. So our first one is they just changed their name. Is it the NCLEX Mastery app? But they just changed the name and I want to say it's called My Mastery. I think it's called My Mastery. Can anyone verify that for me though? Because it used to be called. It used nclex RN Mastery is what it used to be called.

I'm sure if you look that up, you'll still find it.

Yeah, like nclex Mastery. So NCLEX Mastery, it's an app, but I think they just changed their name to My Mastery. So double check that. But it's like NCLEX RN Mastery. Check that out, you'll find it. It's an app for your phone. Just has nursing school exam questions. Nclex practice questions. That is what I used in nursing school. It's what I use to study for the nclex. Super great. So handy. So, so handy because you just go through question after question and they give you the rationale for it. So helpful. Lervin. My mastery is correct. Perfect. My mastery. Thank you, Kristen.

My Mastery.

Now. My Mastery. That's what I thought. Yeah, I just got that last. I just thought I saw that like, I don't know, a couple weeks ago. My Mastery. So check it out. My Mastery. So there, there's that. And then also do I have it? It's the Saunders, the Saunders Comprehensive Review Guide, which you may or may not already have for your school. Saunders Comprehensive Review Guide for the nclex. Or I think they also have one for LPN as well. I'm sure they do. So check that out. That is a physical book. It's kind of like a study guide and then it has practice questions at the back of the chapters. So there you go.

Is My Mastery, Is the app free?

I honestly have no idea.

No idea. Go ahead and check it out.

I do know they used to have a free version. I have the paid version. I had the paid version when I was in nursing school. And when I was studying for the nclex. I don't know what the pricing is now though. I'm not sure. NCLEX Mastery. Yep. Yeah, is my mastery now. So check that out. That is my top resource, my mastery. So check that out. It's on your phone. So easy. So our oldest was 10 weeks old, I think when I took the NCLEX 10 weeks. And so I remember. So I just had a baby. Just had a baby. And then, you know, just being up all night, you know, feeding a baby, trying to get a baby to sleep. Like I was just on my phone on that, my mastery app, going through questions. That's, I mean that was my life, right? For this. While I was studying for the nclex, my if I can do it, you can do it. There's a story for you.

Great. Let's see. K. Sorry about names. You were asking where to get the book manual. So I'm assuming you mean the study system I just posted in the YouTube up in the comments. Nursing School.com study system is the study system that we have for all things nursing school related.

Yes. This is your step by step guide through nursing school and how to study. So basically any question that you have about studying in nursing school is in here. Like how many hours should you study? What do you do if you fail an exam? How do I study if my instructor doesn't teach? How do I study med surg. How do I study fundamentals? How do I learn meds faster? How to asapta questions? How to pass your nursing school exams? It's all in here. Literally friends, all in here. So nursingschool success.com forward/study system is that one. Now I did find the NCLEX book. It was over here. So this is the Saunders book. So in here there's like study there. It's basically a big study guide but then at the end of each chapter are practice questions. So this is the one. If you want to screenshot that. This one, go ahead, screenshot it.

And you said that sometimes people actually need this for their nursing school? Depending on your program. Yes.

Your program might already require this. So check to see if you have it first.

All right, very good. Let me see. Let us jump into another question. Are you ready? Ready for another question, guys?

Yep.

All right, this one, we've, we've talked about nerves and stress and things before. I think even on last Wednesday or last Monday, we talked about nerves. This one's a little bit different from Shelley. How do you get over interview nerves? So not the nerves for Taking tests necessarily, but for interview or. I mean, I would almost put it in the same bucket, but I guess background for me. Again, not a nurse. What are these interviews for? And how do you get over those nerves?

So I'm not entirely clear on what interview you mean. Like, are you interviewing for a job? Are you interviewing for nursing school? Is it an exit interview in nursing school? You know, there's different kinds of interviews. Like, we just had a member, one of our nursing office members last week who said she's got her exit interview, I think this week, actually. But you need to, like, meet with an instructor and do an interview for that. And when I was in nursing school, we also had, like, interview things. I don't know if you call it an interview or, like, a debrief with, like, clinical. Right. You go for your clinical evaluation one on one with your instructor, kind of like an interview. So can you give me a little more clarity? Let's just jam on, though. How do you. It's kind of like the underlying thing, like, how do you just be confident in your skills? Right? How do you. How you know. How do you just be confident in what you know? And actually, beyond that, I think that that really is the key, is to be confident in what you know and everything else. Leave up to God.

Mm. Yeah. So, again, kind of the same thing is, at what point be confident in your skills, do 100% the best that you can do in preparing, and once you are confident in that, leave everything else up to God.

Y. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, there's. We try to control everything. We try to control everything in life, right? We want to control everything and have control over everything, but that's not the case, nor is that really what's best for us.

Right?

If I was in control of everything, I'm sure the world would be in shambles. That's why we have God, right? He knows. So you just have to try your best. Trying your best for sure. Leave it all on the table. Make sure that you are really giving it your all. Walk into your exam, walk into your interview, Give it everything you got, and then leave it. Like, leave it there. Leave it all on the table. Leave it up to God, because you've done everything that you can control, right? We can't control what questions we're gonna get on an exam. Sometimes they will come out of left field. The footnote on page 13,000, you know, 102. It happens, you know, you will get random nursing school questions on an exam. It will happen. You will not know the answer, but you give it to your best guess. As long as you know that you studied your hardest, you did your best, you tried your best, that's all you can do, right? Same thing with an interview. You can prepare as much as possible, but at some point we just have to step back and say, you know what? God's got this, he knows.

Yeah. And I think that's really the key to it is putting a hundred percent of yourself into it. A lot of the times afterwards there's always that lingering feeling, oh, I could have done this, I could have done that, I could. Did I study enough? I think is a question that we get. So as long as you're putting it all into there, and that's what we help with, is how to study more efficiently as well so that you do have time to do other things too. But really that's, that's it. Put a hundred percent of your time into studying confidently and then be confident with that so that when you go in, you put everything on the table.

Right? For sure.

Aaron was asking, well, how do you deal with finals week stress? And that's kind of the same thing too. There's a lot of other things that could be involved with stress that we could jam on. But a lot of that has to do with just oh, I don't know what to study or just not focused.

Energy like what you're doing, what we talked about on Wednesday, right. If you're coming up on final exams this week, you have to make sure that you are putting in the time to study like we talked about last week, like we talk about all the time. Oftentimes what we see in nursing school is students putting off studying. Because here's what happens. If you don't believe that you can pass, if you don't believe that it's possible for you, you won't even try, you'll just give up, right? You know, if you don't think you can do anything, if you don't think you can do something, you're not going to give it your all. So that's really where that comes down to is for finals, right? If you're riding the line right now in nursing school, if you're riding that line, toe in that line of pass fail and the final is what you have left. And you are sitting here right now not studying or haven't studied over the past few weeks, my friend, that is self sabotage. Don't do that to yourself. Because what you're doing, if you're procrastinating and putting off studying, you're not giving yourself the best chance of passing, you basically do it to yourself. Right? It's you know, you guys have heard me talk about burk esteel and thelifecoachschool.com so she's my life coach. Love her. Check her out please. I've had members say, you know, life, whole life changed after you told me about her. Christina. Yes. Go check her out. Her name is brooke castillo@thelifecoachschool.com so what she calls this is failure ahead of time. Instead of giving it your all and going into your final exam to leave it, like we said, leave it all on the court, leave it all on the table. Instead of doing that, we get caught, we get stuck. Stuck in this self sabotage spiral where we procrastinate and we don't study and we put it off and we put it off and we put it off until the day before the exam and we are freaking out because we haven't studied. Right. Failure ahead of time. You are failing ahead of time. You are setting yourself up for failure. That is not what we want to do. Right. So you got to put push past that. Push past. That's huge mindset block. We actually talk about it in the study system because it is so important. So important is the number one mindset block we see nursing students do. Getting caught up in procrastination, not studying. And ultimately it's self sabotage. If you don't believe that you can pass your exam, if you don't believe that you can pass your final, you're not going to study, you're going to procrastinate and then what's going to happen? You're not going to do well on that final self fulfilling prophecy. Self sabotage.

And again, her name is Brooke Castillo.

Brooke Castillo, the life coach. School.

Life coach school.com.

Check it out. Yeah, Charlena, can you put her name in the chat? Brooke castillo, life coachschool.com all right. Yep.

We've had a couple of questions about the nursing SOS membership community. So it is currently closed. We had enrollment last week. We only opened enrollment a couple of times a year and our last opening was was last week. So the best way to be notified about when it opens up is to join the waitlist. So go ahead and go to nursingschoolofsuccess.com join and there will be a sign up for a waitlist. Go ahead and go. Enter your information there and you will be the first to know.

First to know when it opens.

Also you can also hit subscribe and hit the like button on YouTube. We talk about when it opens up on, on these lives too. Or when it is open. We, we talk about it a lot on these lives too. So if you don't want to miss that, go ahead and hit subscribe. And like all those other things, you have not done that yet.

The bell. Click the bell.

So you can click the bell and get a little ding or whatever. So.

Yeah. Does it ding when you click it? That sounds fun.

I don't think so. I wish it did.

That'd be cool.

Yeah.

We're at like, what, over 50,000 YouTube subscribers.

Hooray, guys. Thank you very much.

That's fun, everybody.

I. It hasn't been. I have, I haven't looked in a while.

I remember the massive party I had in my brain when we got a hundred YouTube subscribers. Remember that?

Big deal.

Like a hundred people. That is so many people. Now we have 50,000 and it's like, whoa, that is a lot of nursing students. So happy to be helping you guys.

And for those just joining, welcome to the nursing school show where we do help you with getting through nursing school by answering nursing school related questions. Mostly Christina does answering. I am just here for comedic relief, if you will.

That's funny. And we talk about other things. Like we do, you know.

Yes, the PS5 is out already, guys. That's an inside joke.

Inside joke that I don't know. Do I look like someone that would know when the PS5 comes out? No. So they were probably asking you.

Yes.

I feel like you look like someone who would know.

Do I look like someone that knows when the PS5 comes out? It is out.

So funny. Hey, Charlotte, I was going to shout you out. I was thinking about you. Charlotte jumps on and then she starts commenting. I love it. Charlotte, you're the best.

Also, I just wanted to shout out Melissa here. Melissa, I know that you're in the comments here on YouTube, but I wanted to go back to one of your comments. It took me two solid semesters to understand how nursing school questions were set. But I finally got it watching a lot of YouTube videos. But a few people made it get. Made me get it. Especially nursing sos. Yes. A big hurdle is just understanding the questions and how they're asking things. So like you said too, just practice, practice, practice. So we talked a lot about that.

That is so fun. That is so fun.

Tony has a good question. When you were pre nursing, were you intimidated when you applied to the nursing program and were you scared that you would not get into the program?

I think there's always a Chance that you wouldn't get accepted into the program, my nursing program, at least back then. I don't know how they do it now, but it was point based. So I. I was. I was pretty sure I was gonna get in because I had, like, the highest points, I think.

Yeah, so they did that. Right? That's basically like a little sheet that they have for. If you had this, it's this many points. If you had this, this many points and you just added it up and with. If you're within these points, then you're good to go.

And if I remember right, I had like 46 out of 47 or something. Or like 40. I think I was only missing one point. And then I think they took everybody in my cohort who had like four points and something. So it was like 40. It's like 40. Was it out of 42. So they would have taken everyone with like a 38 and above, and I had like a 41, something like that, you know, So I. In that way. Yeah. To be honest, I wasn't. I was pretty confident that I was gonna get in. Of course, there's always a chance that, like, everyone in the class got. Had like a 42. So there's that. But it also goes back to my belief about myself is that I can do anything. I can do anything. And so if I. I knew if I didn't get accepted into nursing school, it's fine. Just try again, try again, try again, try again, try again. It'll happen. You just can't give up. Right? So I think that brings a lot of peace to know that I can do anything if I set my mind to it. And really, I mean, that's. That's really kind of it. Go back to number one. Tip number one, believe you can do anything. Tip number two, Read number one again. I should make that. I should make that a thing. I should make like. Like that, a graphic or something. That's a pretty good one. Take that and keep it forever, my friends. All right, what do we got next?

Aaron, you're saying two things I learned from my first semester in nursing school is good time management and organizational skills are essential.

Amen to that. Preach it. Time management, organization. I remember I talked about this last week on the live. I remember taking a nursing school exam one time, and I got to the test, sat down for it, and started taking it. Like, I'm looking around the room, like, did they give us the wrong examination? Like, literally looking around at people, everyone taking their exams, like, does anyone notice that they gave us the wrong test. They didn't. It was the right test. Christina here just forgot to study half of what she was supposed to study because I didn't collect all of my notes ahead of time. I was not as organized as I should have been. That was rough.

Yes. I think this kind of goes. Kind of goes a little bit to Arietta. We are learning so much information at once. How do you internally organize all the information? My brain is about to explode with information.

Oh, my friend. Arietta, I am going to.

Take a.

Gander and I'm gonna guess that you're in fundamentals or just starting med search. Are you in Med Surg 1, like the first half of med surge and fundamentals? Let me know. Let me know if my guess is correct. The thing that happens is the further you get into your program, the more things come together. So, yes, your first year of nursing school, depending on how long your program is, the first part of nursing school, you're going to literally feel like all of the information is about to explode out of your brain area. Yes. Just starting med surge.

Ha.

I knew that. You're gonna feel like it's going to just fall out because there's so much. There's so much. You exactly like what you said, Arietta. You don't know where to put it. There's no room. Right. It's like it's going to. It's gotta come out somewhere. They can't. More can't go in. But the thing is, is the more that you go through med surg, the further you get in nursing school, the more that the dots are going to connect. The more the puzzle pieces are going to connect, the more critical thinking you're going to be able to do, the more really. It's just that the more things are just going to fall into place, just gonna fall into place for you and you're gonna be amazed, Arietta. You're gonna be amazed when that happens. You're gonna, like, get to clinical one day or, you know, go to lecture class and be like, oh, right, right. That makes sense. It's gonna happen. And then please come back and tell me when that happens. It's like a light bulb. It's like, you know.

So to your question, how do you internally organize all that information? I think to Christina's point, you'll get there. It will all click. But please don't try and keep it all internally right from the get go. Be sure to, yeah, write it out. Keep notes, like we say a lot, your whiteboards, your flashcards, that will help it all click together is just go over it in different ways, practice your critical thinking, teach it to somebody, Teaching it to someone, all of that, to practice knowing that information and then also to practice your critical thinking so that it will start clicking together. That is really doesn't need to stay internally only right from the beginning. It will get there, even though it's not there now.

So you'll get there. It takes time. I think that one of the biggest lies of nursing school is that when you get your acceptance letter, you walk out to your mailbox and all of a sudden you get your acceptance letter and then it's like a shower from heaven. You all of a sudden know all the information and you know how to critically think. Like, who had that experience? That is what, you know, seems to be expected of us in nursing school, right? You get your acceptance letter and all of a sudden we are just blessed with this knowledge of how to critically think and all of these things. And that's not the case, friends. That's not the case. That's, let me reiterate, not the case in nursing school. It takes time is the biggest lie, and I hope you don't fall for it. Please know, please give yourself grace. Please know that it takes time. If you are in nursing fundamentals, if you are just beginning med surge, you're gonna go through these growing pains, right? You're gonna go through these growing pains. It's gonna take you a little bit to get your feet under you, to gain traction, to start connecting the dots, start putting the pieces together and start knowing things now, like we always say, the study tips that we have for you, focusing on those four main categories for med surg, like we talked about, focusing on those four things as well for fundamentals. So patho signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions, focusing on those four categories for fundamentals and med surg will help you learn it faster. It's going to help you learn and focus your study time better. But that's not to say that you are still expected to know everything in fundamentals. That's not true. Just focus on those four main things. That's fine, you'll be fine. And then keep going and keep doing that, keep going, keep doing that, keep studying, keep practicing. Then you're all of a sudden going to get second half of med surg, advanced med surg, second half of your program and think, wow, I, I'm starting to get this. I am starting to get this. It's going to happen. It's going to happen eventually, but it takes time. So give yourself grace through that process.

Yeah, I think that that's a great point too, Arietta. You were talking about so much information at once and that's because you just have all these little pieces of information. And that's what I talked about, mentioned just briefly about getting into critical thinking. Because when you get down to it, it's really about those four main things that Christina talked about earlier. Patho signs and symptoms, assessment and interventions. It's really all of that.

And.

And as you get further into med surge, you'll notice that all of the topics line up in there. And as soon as that starts clicking, you're getting so much more information. But now that you know how to categorize it, it becomes so much easier to organize it both internally and externally.

Yep. So absolutely.

I think that that's a really good point too. So even though it seems disjointed now at the beginning, they are all connected.

Yep.

Brandy's backing up. Brandy, exciting news. Today is my tonight. Tonight. Today. Tonight is my last clinical for semester one. Only two days left of the semester. I made it. So congrats to everyone else as well. That is coming up on the end of their semesters party. So. So you can enjoy a little bit.

So party semester dance for you.

Brandy's saying that. Also med surg related. I start med Surg in January. I searched the courses in Med Surge. So yeah, your membership in the membership. We do have a lot of courses for Med Surge.

Yes.

How do you search for it, Brandi?

Basically that search bar is terrible.

Don't use the search bar.

Don't use the search number one. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. We need to get that fixed. So. Okay, here's the thing, Brandi, can you tell me what, what topics you're covering? What, what are you learning next semester in Med search starting in January? Tell me because we've got the full, you know, in the nursing as this membership community, we have got all the med search courses for you. Cardiac, renal, respiratory, gi, neuro, endocrine. What am I missing? Immunology, skin. Tell me what I'm missing. Did I say GI guy? We've got it all. Like it's there. So, Brandi, what you're going to want to do is when you get to nursing school in January, when you start your med search classes, go find the high level topic like are you studying cardiac? Are you studying respiratory? And click into that course. Click into that course and you will see all of the disorders there. Yep, there you go. Matthew's Going to add that to his list. We gotta, you know, we need a solution. Cool. Someone asked on Instagram how old I am. People ask us.

Yes, they do ask that.

How old do you think? That's probably not a very good game to play. Someone's gonna say 74, which would be great.

Yeah.

I'm so excited to be 74 one day. What a blessing.

October man is asking, is basics similar to med surge? So I know that different meds, different nursing schools have different terminologies. Oh, some. Some are similar, but sometimes classes can be different. I don't really know what basics is or what med surge is.

Is basic.

Is basically similar to med surge.

Depends on what you mean by basics.

Yeah. What does basics mean?

Like, you can have like, different schools name it, different things. Basic. Like, it could be basic med surge. I don't know how your school names it. It might be basic med Surge and then it might be advanced med Surge. So then by basics you would mean probably stroke, diabetes, heart failure, those things. But if by basics you mean fundamentals, then that's very different. Fundamentals is laying the foundation for things and then med surg will kind of put those pieces together. However, at least in my fundamentals class. In your fundamentals class, you might learn things like stroke, heart failure, diabetes, the more common disorders that you know, you might start learning those in fundamentals. Okay, so as far as like, is basics similar to med surg? It depends on what do you mean by basics. Sorry, sorry. I couldn't give you a better answer than that.

Without further clarification, let's try one of her previous questions. Actually, she had another question that I think is good. Any tips on how to manage studying and keeping up with personal life? Tough time staying motivated and study fully. So we get this topic on a. On the regular.

On the regular.

Any tips on how to study, how to manage studying and keeping up with your personal life? Tough time staying motivated to fully study fully. So that first part, how to manage studying and keeping up with personal life, that's really why we're here. We are here. Christina had the calling to really help nursing students. How to study effectively and efficiently so you have time to do other things. So you have time for family or other topics. We feel you that you're overwhelmed and how can you study everything you have in the most efficient way possible? So that's why we created the membership community. That's why we also have our step by step guide in the community or the DIY study system. So a lot of that information is in there. On how to study so that you can study as efficiently as possible to keep up with personal life as well. That being said, I like to think about our lives as not necessarily a 50, 50 split or balance. When I think of balance, I think balance more long term in seasons. And you just need to decide what season of life you're in. Sometimes there are seasons where you spend a lot more time with family and not much working. There's other times that you are in school or doing something where it takes more of your time. So you need to focus on that. And that's the season of life you're in. So recognizing that the season of life that you may be in is nursing school, and so maybe that does take up more of your time. But recognize that you do not have to keep track of time and make sure that exactly 50% is here, 50 is here, 50% is here, because that is more than 100% and no one can do that. So just make sure that you're in the season and you're okay with that season Christina was talking about that too, is really it's your decision on what season you want to be in and how much time you do want to focus on it and whether you do just have enough time for that, you might not. And that is totally okay as long as you're okay with that and you come to that decision on your own. So there's really that too tough time staying motivated and studying fully. So a lot of that is just being at peace with your decision of what season you're in and how much time you are spending with that. And an extension of that is something that we talk about a lot too, is finding your why, linking up to why. Why are you in nursing school? Why are you doing what you are doing and being okay with that? Why?

Absolutely.

So that would help you. And we talked about motivation. There's a lot of things that we talked about just this past week, just about motivation in particular. And motivation can come and go, but as long as you stick to your why, as long as you're sticking to your values and have that all straight in your mind and are okay with decisions that you're making, then motivation can come and go. So if it's not there, go ahead and do it anyway and it will come back.

Yep.

So I don't think that you should hang your hat on whether I'm motivated or not. I'm only going to do what motivates me and whatever doesn't motivate me, I'm not going to do that.

That you'll never get anywhere in life.

Yeah, that could be problematic.

Never get anywhere in life. How often do you wake up and you're like, I'm so motivated today.

If that were the case, then I would just be in bed a lot.

So because you are motivated.

I'm motivated to stay in bed.

I am motivated.

My highest motivation.

If you are someone who is always motivated, please let me know because I want to know how you. What is the secret? No, you know, it's what Matthew said. It's a lot of seasons. Knowing that nursing school is a season and that it's not going to last forever really helps. And, you know, like you said, motivation doesn't matter. We. We put so much stock in motivation. Think like all these motivational quotes and all this stuff to, like, get you motivated. Just do it. You know, like, it's not. You don't need to feel motivated to get something done.

Right.

You know, you don't. Maybe that's one of the biggest cultural lies, I mean, is that you need to be.

I'd say that, yeah. Especially in our culture. Now, that would be considered, quote, unquote, controversial to say that. But I really think that, yes, you control your feelings. Your actions are not dependent on your feelings. You can feel one way and act a totally different way. So. And again, you just need to be at peace with your. Your core values and your core decisions, and it will come and it will go.

Yep. Motivation comes and goes.

What is it?

There's. There's a. There's a saying in there somewhere. There could be something goes, but I don't know. Whatever, just do it. Like the Nike slogan? Yes, just do it. See, Nike had this right all along. They got it right. When was that slogan created?

That was a long, long time ago.

Long, long time ago. Yeah. Just do it. My friends, what made you decide to do nursing? And are you planning to go for your np? Such a good question. I never wanted to be a nurse. True story.

She used to be a Zumba instructor.

I used to be a Zumba instructor.

Shout out to all the people that do Zumba.

And I know that you. You can. You can picture that, I'm sure. Like, I think I just look like a Zumba instructor. Like, don't I just look like a Zoom? Like, I have so much energy and I'm always, like, moving. I feel like I just. Yeah, that's maybe actually who I am to my core. I'm a Zoom instructor.

Could be.

I never wanted to be a nurse until. So I went to school for other things. And nursing is actually my third college degree, so. Third? Yeah, third college degree. And I, um, have a pacemaker. I had serious heart. Things go on. And I was in the hospital multiple times. Surgery, pacemaker, put in all the things. And that experience is when I got the call from God to go to nursing school.

You had a really good nurse?

I had really good nurses, yes. When I was diagnosed with my heart condition, it was not a doctor, it was a PA and two nurses who diagnosed me. It took a decade. So I was nine the first time I started having cardiac issues that I know of. I was fainting, passing out. For a decade. I was nine years old. For a decade, until I was 19, I was. I mean, I could not even get up in the morning. I could not stand, like, my heart just could not handle it. I was diagnosed by a PA and two nurses. And that is what helped push me like that experience as a patient, seeing what nurses do, was what pushed me to go to nursing school. And one of the best decisions ever made. You know? You got it. You will never be disappointed when you follow God's call on your life. Because if it's what he wants, this is what we do. So that's what we do. Yeah.

Yeah, I completely agree.

Yep. Will I go to np? Will I become a nurse practitioner? Jury's still out on that. I think it'd be so fun. I don't know if it's in the cards. We'll see. We'll see. I'll let you know.

You'll be the first to know.

You'll be the first to know.

I don't know about that, but.

Just kidding. He'll be the first to know. Yep.

No, you guys will follow us on your journey and we'll figure it out as we go.

So that would be fun. Hey, I have a question. Hey, can I jam on the question?

Go jam on a question.

This is a question that I. I've been meaning to ask, but I don't know, maybe you've been meaning to ask. I think it would be so fun to just start, like, a different YouTube channel on, like, our life and do. Will Christina decide to go to MD school, for example? More like a vloggy thing. I don't know if we'll do it, but would you be interested in that? Sounds kind of fun to me.

Anyway, we'll answer those kind of questions. Let's open that up for discussion on that channel.

On the PS4.

Yeah. No, I was talking more like. Yeah, are you going to go to MP or The. If you do go to np. The struggles or the struggle.

Yeah.

You know, new thing, new fancy things that we'll encounter.

Yeah. You know, like life. More life stuff. Brandy. Yes. Because I'm nosy. Right. Like, I love watching like vlog. Is it. Let's. It's like called a vlog. Right. Because I'm cool. I know what a vlog. I don't feel like we vlog. I don't feel like this is a vlog. This is like a different.

It's kind of halfway between like education.

Stuff, you know, I don't know.

We do a lot off topic and some people do say, hey, stick to the topic. And that's great too. We do. We do like those comments as well. So we know what you guys want because ultimately we want to make sure that this is content that you guys find helpful and want to. Want to watch and listen to. So if you think that we are going too far off topic, maybe we should just create another channel.

That's what I'm thinking.

So yeah. Comment below if you think that might be a good idea or whatnot.

We can just create another channel where Christina and Matthew get on here and just talk about random things for an hour and you guys can participate in. Because we're best friends. Right. You know, anyway, that's something I've been toying with because I think it'd be fun. We've got a lot of yeses. Everyone's like, yes, please do it.

Okay, October, Brandy had a comment here. I'm gonna do some kind of cross comments because October, you're on Instagram and Brandi, you're on Facebook. But I feel like October can benefit from Brandi's comments. So I'm going to read it. That's what we do. Motivation to me is a choice. Stop procrastinating, put the phone down. Promise yourself 25 minutes of studying, then a five minute break. No excuses. Just do it.

Just. No, it's. Just do it. Brandy.

Sorry I didn't do the class.

Just do it. Love you, friends. That's awesome.

So I think that's so funny. That is great. And the quote that we had from a week ago. Go. What's the best way to eat an elephant?

A bite at a time.

Bite at a time. So I think that's really good. And something that I. We overlooked when we were talking about how to manage studying is. Yeah. Break it down into bite sized chunks. That. That could help too.

So yeah.

Yes.

That is so funny. Prima Bella, my friend, where have you been all my Life missed you. I would tune in for to that for sure. Day in the life. Yeah. Day in the life of Matthew and Christina which is relatively uneventful but I think can be kind of funny. He could be hilarious. He is so funny. So anyway I think that would of.

Nursing school hello and am now on winter break. Hooray. Congrats to everyone else too that are finishing up going on our break. How long would you recommend relaxing before school? Starting to study for NCLEX during winter break.

Okay, so this is your last semester right.

So finish third so going into fourth. So if you only have four semesters that could be the last one if I did math correctly.

Well I mean yeah, it depends on or are you in an adn not ADN program A like a seller. A BSN accelerated bachelor's. That could only be three semesters. So if. Okay, two pieces of advice. If you are. If you are. Oh yes. Going into fourth. Okay so if you're going into fourth I would study and like kind of get a feel for what's coming up next for you in January. Here's how I feel. Here's my general feeling about the NCLEX and how to study for it. Friends, nursing school is studying for the nclex. Nursing schools are very good, most often very good at preparing you for taking the NCLEX exam. So I don't see those two things as mutually exclusive. Is that the right term?

That is the right term, yes.

Boom. Christina knows something. I do not see those terms as mutually exclusive. You can have both. You can go to nursing school and study for the NCLEX at the same time because it is the same thing. As long as your school is doing it right, which most of them are. Even if you don't think they are, I promise you friend, it's probably better than you think. So if you are doing well in nursing school, you know, if you are following our study tips the Saunders review guide, I'll pull it out again. Screenshot this Screenshot that this is the book you want this one if you're doing pretty good with this. If you are doing the My Mastery app using that one. If you're doing pretty well on NCLEX questions, I would not put a ton of time stressing about the nclex. Don't put in a ton of time stressing about the nclex. So that's just my two cents about that. If you're going into fourth semester I would get with an upperclassman about like someone who just did that semester and ask them what it's like what they would do to study beforehand. Those are the questions I would ask. I would get with someone ahead of you one term and ask them, okay, what did you do? What. What am I expected to do? You know, what's coming up. All of those things.

So it's more prepping for the next semester.

More prepping for the next semester rather than the nclex.

And definitely relax. Relax on winter break. Your brain does need some relaxing. So, yeah, definitely do that. If you're looking for some. Some funny. Not funny. I wouldn't say funny, but a video I think we did last year or the year before.

I don't know.

I don't know what you're talking about. It's. It's 10 things that we did during over winter break.

We did do that. That's totally irrelevant this year because no.

One can go anywhere irrelevant this year. But if you watch, if you're one that would like our vlog, you would probably find that interesting as well.

That's true. If you like vlogs and want Christina and Matthew to do a vlog, we have done like two on our channel and that is one of them. It's. What's it called? It's like we went to the zoo and we just recorded the zoo outing.

It's 10 things that we did. 10 things to do over winter break or something like that.

We should totally post that video up somewhere. Well, it's on YouTube.

It's on YouTube.

But like, I should share it somewhere. Yeah, so, yeah, totally.

Again, a little irrelevant this year. Slash. You probably can't do a lot of the things we did, but.

Oh, but cookie baking is one of them.

Yes.

You know, we did bake cookies. We did that. And yeah, we do that.

You know, I think the main thing is. Yes, you finished the semester. Congrats. And you're going to fourth. So take some time. Take some time. If you do want to prep for the next semester. Definitely. And I think this applies to anyone, no matter what semester they're in. Find an upperclassman that just finished the semester you're going into and ask them how it went and what things they would study if they were to do it again or if they were in your shoes.

Absolutely, 100%.

Yeah. I do want to jam on just this last one real quick. Can we just one here from Reality Break, which is a fun name. Do you have any advice for making a good study environment? So it's just a study environment question.

You know, you kind of have in this environment in this environment of the world, you need to really be flexible with that. Because a lot of us have kids that are at home homeschooling, you know, your spouse, roommates, whoever might be working from home, studying from home. Everyone's home now, right? Everyone's home. And so you just have to be flexible. Don't. I would say, just don't put too much pressure on yourself to be perfect, to make this perfect. Like, Pinterest office desk environment. Like, you should see my office. It's kind of a mess. Papers all over. Like, how to get organized in nursing school. Christina. More like how to get organized in life. It's what I need to work on. You know, just give yourself a break. I don't. I don't want you to think that you have to do it perfectly right now or ever. You know, so we. I mean, we have tips, of course, like a white noise machine. If you, you know, have kids on the other side of your door, kids around playing, you know, you could like, what do they call them? AirPods. Earbuds. AirPods is a thing. Headphones, headphones, white noise, classical music. Does that help? I don't know.

Well, I think. I think backing up a little bit because I have not said it this time yet.

Okay. See?

Know thyself, Know thyself. It's my quote. I say every time. Yeah. Really, you need to understand what is your environment and what's the best way that you know how. How to study. Some people I know really like listening to hard rock while studying. I don't understand, but if that is really distracting, but if that works for you, then so be it. But really, the best thing is what works for you. And then do your best to carve out a section of the house or corner of a room to get in that zone so that you do have a spot where you can put yourself in the best learning space as possible. To Christina's point, don't chase perfection, because when you chase perfection, you're almost. At some point, you're using that as an excuse. Oh, my pencils are not all sharpened. I need to go do that before I study. Oh, no, my paper is not aligned correctly. Oh, well, it's too late now. I need to go do something else. So don't strive for perfection, because you'll never achieve that. Just get to a spot where you can study and you study. The other thing that's pretty cool that Christine does talk about is little bits at a time add up.

Yep.

So you don't need to be in a perfect environment to Study just little bits at a time. It's all additive. It's all cumulative. Just. Just study. Just get there. Get studying. Get to increase your efficiency as much as possible. Those things that would help you. And you're the best person to know yourself. Whether it's quiet noise, quiet noise. Whether it's quiet, whether it's white noise, whether it's hard rock or classical music or rap or whatever, then so be it.

Know thyself if it's bright lights.

If it's night lights.

Christmas lights, Christmas lights.

My brother, when he was in school, his dorm room was just all red Christmas lights. So it was just red Christmas spirit all year round.

Friends kind of vampire like know thyself. Hey, did you notice, babe, that we matched today?

We do match.

Good thing I put over a. We're like, how do we do this all the time?

On Mondays, we wear pink.

On Mondays, we wear pink.

That's how it goes.

We are that couple that unintentionally matches all the time. I don't even know how it happens. That's so funny. All right, my friends, we will see you on Wednesday.

Wednesday.

If you're a nursing SOS member, I will be jumping in the Facebook group. So fun.

Can't see.

So we'll chat then.

All right, take care, guys.

Bye.

Bye.

So fun. Always a blast.