Studying, or “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Senses”

Alright. You’re here because you want access to all my secrets and knowledge about how to be a 4.0 nursing student who never makes a mistake, balances their time perfectly, and shows up to clinical in beautifully pressed scrubs with no bags under their eyes. And I really hate to disappoint you just two posts in, but if I had the secret to all that, my life would be like…at least 85% better.

But I’m going to tell you what I do know, and I’m going to do it in bite-size, manageable doses so that you don’t zone out, and also so you keep coming back. Tricky, I know.

So tell me if this is you—you go to class, you take your notes, you sit down to study, and then you read the same paragraph 15 times in a row. This made sense in class, right? How come now it looks like it’s in another language? Oh god, I’m having a stroke, aren’t I? No, no arm drift…I don’t smell pancakes…okay, not a stroke.

You’ve discovered the most cruel trick of learning: your brain f*ing hates it.

That’s only partially true, though, right? You’ve learned things in the past…you can tie your shoes, ride a bike, quote your favorite movie, and sing your absolute jam at the top of your lungs. So why the hell can’t you remember what erythroblastosis fetalis is!?

Think back to your favorite memory, or the strongest memory you’ve got. Let’s take a nice childhood memory of mine as an example. I’m two years old, and I’ve woken up crying hysterically in the night. My dad is holding me, swaying back and forth. I can see over his shoulder the shape of a crystal bear fan-pull hanging from the ceiling fan. I feel the air moving on my skin. I hear the hum of the electric motor, and my dad softly singing “hush little baby, don’t say a word, daddy’s gonna buy you a mockingbird…”

What’s happening in this memory that I can recall it so vividly? There’s visual stimuli. There’s auditory stimuli. There’s tactile and kinesthetic stimuli. And most of all, there’s emotion. And I’m willing to wager that in your strongest memories, you have all those same types of stimuli.

That’s the thing—your brain loves to make strong neural pathways when it has a lot of sensory input to combine. Know what it hates? Reading black text on a white page and trying to make a memory out of it. And that’s why YOU hate it, too (I mean, you are your brain, but whatever. Go with me on this.). So, what’s an exhausted nursing student to do?

Combine your senses when you study!

COMBINE YOUR SENSES WHEN YOU STUDY.

Combine. Your. Senses. When. You. Study.

Am I getting through to you? Hopefully I am, since I’ve now added a visual stimulus to the mix.

“Okay, Meris, good lord, I GET IT. But what does it MEAN?”

I hear you, dear reader, and luckily for you, I’m planning to explain. Stop reading the words on the page and expecting to absorb them. Instead try some of these methods!

• Physically write (do NOT type) your notes and key points down! And then do it again. And do it some more.

• Jiggle your leg while you study, or take your materials to the treadmill. Walk around your room while you look at your notes. Go for a walk to get some fresh air, but like, don’t walk into traffic. I am not liable for any car vs. pedestrian accidents.

• Say OUT LOUD what you’re learning/reading/remembering. Are you going to look (sound) stupid? YES. Are you going to ace your exam? YES. So who’s the silly one now?

• Better yet, teach that material out loud. Pretend you’re the professor, and you’re lecturing some other scared students about erythroblastosis fetalis. If you can teach it, you know it!

• Take it a step further, and actually teach it. Set up a study group with your BFFs, and take turns teaching things to one another.

• Watch something that makes it click. Perhaps this is a LevelUpRN video. Maybe it’s a Picmonic story. It could be a Nursing.com cheatsheet or presentation. Or, just go to pinterest or google and find something that works for you (fact check it first, though—this is the internet, after all).

• If you like the text-based style of notes and learning, entice your brain to pay attention by using bright colors, bulleted lists (hello…), charts, graphs, or diagrams! Even better if you write them by hand…

• Make up an acronym or a rhyme or a silly story to help you remember things. Ramelteon? I don’t know her. But wait, ramelteon helps me MELT into sleep? Oh shoot, okay, maybe I do know her.

• BEST OF ALL: COMBINE ALL YOUR SENSES AT ONCE. I carry my notes around while I walk in circles, and I speak out loud to myself as though I’m teaching a class. “Okay, left sided heart failure…you can remember that the L is for Left and also for Lungs. It is caused by the weakening or failure of the left ventricle, leading to circulatory backup into the lungs, presenting as dyspnea, crackles, PND…” you get it.

Have you found the best way for you to study? Let me know in the comments below! And by all means, let me know if you try out any of these methods and find them useful!

Happy studying! Don’t forget to take your meds, and stay hydrated.