Any recovering slackers out there?

[andrew612]

Hey all,
This will be somewhat embarrassing for a first post, but I'm in serious need of some self-discipline skills here. To make a long story short, I was a great high school student and went to college two years early. At that point, I kind of fell apart academically--suffering from lack of motivation and discipline, once I got out of my parents' house.

All in all I managed a 3.1 in a liberal arts degree. I decided to try and ace my ADN degree, but now will be lucky to pull off a 3.6. I've done great in the sciences, but find my lack of experience to really hurt my nursing classes. (Ironically, as a job I serve collection notices for a prominent anesthesia network)

I feel like I've really been busting my hump to pull A's and B's in nursing, when many students working as CNAs seem to pull the A's without effort. At any rate, I was looking for study advice, to really bring up the grades and kick butt in the rest of the program.

What gets you people motivated? Is it the grade, the learning, or competition with other students? Advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

[ethernaut]

Hey all,
This will be somewhat embarrassing for a first post, but I'm in serious need of some self-discipline skills here. To make a long story short, I was a great high school student and went to college two years early. At that point, I kind of fell apart academically--suffering from lack of motivation and discipline, once I got out of my parents' house.

All in all I managed a 3.1 in a liberal arts degree. I decided to try and ace my ADN degree, but now will be lucky to pull off a 3.6. I've done great in the sciences, but find my lack of experience to really hurt my nursing classes. (Ironically, as a job I serve collection notices for a prominent anesthesia network)

I feel like I've really been busting my hump to pull A's and B's in nursing, when many students working as CNAs seem to pull the A's without effort. At any rate, I was looking for study advice, to really bring up the grades and kick butt in the rest of the program.

What gets you people motivated? Is it the grade, the learning, or competition with other students? Advice would be appreciated. Thanks!
well, this is what i can offer.
nursing school is a whole different ball game than CNA.
so, your 3.6 is absolutely just fine.
your "lack of experience" (in nursing i presume) is expected, isn't it? what you learn in CNA school may help a little, but again, you appear to be doing fine. much of nursing school is on the job learning. so that will matter in the end.
as for anesthesia school, if you decided to do it, student loans and cost of attendance are huge motivation factors.
you also learn that getting A's would be nice, but not practical most of the time. your "competitive" edge and drive remain intact, but it ends up boiling down to competing with yourself rather than other classmates. B's equal degrees at this point.
so, in short, keep on doing what you're doing, and make it a point to be the best practitioner in the clinical setting, and people will take notice. because that's where it's at in the end. isn't it?

[akijitsu]

Andrew,
I know what you are saying. I have had 5 years experience as a perfusionist, spending time in the OR, Nicu's, Picu's, adult ICU's, preop holding, etc.
I didn't bust my hump in undergrad or grad school, but, looking toward the future, I DID bust my hump in nursing school. I wouldn't worry about the 3.6 GPA. Nursing is more of a soft science. The "right" answer isn't always right to different "experts".
I have come across many a question on tests that I knew the answer to either from my graduate degree in pharmacology, or my experience mentioned above. Each time I thought "how are all the other students supposed to know this?"
Just do as much as you can and keep your eyes and ears open in clinical, observe how they do everything, those observations will help you get a lot of answers right on tests.
Also, look at the school. I'm pretty sure my program did not have one person graduate with a 4.0, and only 5 people out of 107 got a 3.8 and higher.

[andrew612]

Thanks for the advice, folks. It's just a little frustrating to try and "turn over a new leaf", and realize that the leaf is somewhat nebulous! :beerglass:

[Flipballin80]

Hey all,
This will be somewhat embarrassing for a first post, but I'm in serious need of some self-discipline skills here. To make a long story short, I was a great high school student and went to college two years early. At that point, I kind of fell apart academically--suffering from lack of motivation and discipline, once I got out of my parents' house.

All in all I managed a 3.1 in a liberal arts degree. I decided to try and ace my ADN degree, but now will be lucky to pull off a 3.6. I've done great in the sciences, but find my lack of experience to really hurt my nursing classes. (Ironically, as a job I serve collection notices for a prominent anesthesia network)

I feel like I've really been busting my hump to pull A's and B's in nursing, when many students working as CNAs seem to pull the A's without effort. At any rate, I was looking for study advice, to really bring up the grades and kick butt in the rest of the program.

What gets you people motivated? Is it the grade, the learning, or competition with other students? Advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

Hey dude,

try not to be so hard on yourself. Many of us have been in your shoes with not so stellar grades prior to nursing school. Personally, I graduated with a 2.91 gpa in my ADN (D's and F's in my first year community college classes). The only saving grace during that time for me was that I Aced my science classes my second year. I wised up and started taking school seriously and got A's and B's in my nursing program and I busted my hump during my BSN to get all A's.

The party side of me obviously showed during my first couple years in college and I was not motivated at all to go to school. The one thing that motivated me to get my act together was when I noticed how many buddies I've met from going out and partying who were in dead-end jobs and still living with their parents. I did not want to be that guy. That motivation has since transformed into a burning desire to learn as much as I can to be the best practitioner that I can be.

When I was in nursing school, the best way for me to grasp concepts was in clinicals. We had preclinicals where we would choose our patients the night before and I would try to tie my patient with the lecture that we had prior to the clinical. It made it so much easier for me to put it all together.

Stick with it dude, you are doing a good job. Try not to worry about how others in your class are doing and focus on you. Good Luck!!

Ron

web.mac.com/ratienza80