Whether you’ve been to college before or not, if you’re an aspiring LPN or registered nurse, you’ll want to prepare yourself for a few differences between your previous college classes and nursing school.

While some things will be similar, such as going to class, reading the assigned segments of your textbook, taking notes, and taking tests – you’ll want to discipline yourself a bit more for nursing school, because the learning curve is probably more intense than you’re used to.

Let’s review some of these critical differences:

• You must show up – Remember those general ed classes that you could skip once, if not several times per week and still pass, or even pull off good grades nonetheless? Well those days are over and that level of freedom simply doesn’t apply to nursing school. You’ll need to show up EVERY day, no excuses. Reason being, you simply won’t be able to get through, much less digest all the reading material you’ll be assigned.
• Replace your notepads with a laptop – You’ll want to take notes using a laptop instead of your good ol trusty notebooks. This is 2011 and nursing school instructors are starting to dispense a lot of reading material and lectures via Powerpoint slides/presentations. And the instructors speak very quickly. It’s a lot easier to pull up your notes on the laptop, plus typing is easier for most people these days, not only to get ideas down, but to actually read afterward. Classes won’t have those stimulating discussions your debate classes did. You’ll be overwhelmed with the amount of material being dispensed to you by your instructors, so the ability to get it all down and digest as much as possible is crucial. Depending on when your classes start, you’ll most likely be getting a huge reading list and a stack of syllabi in the beginning. At that point, you’ll see what I mean about not being able to read it all.
• Buy your textbooks in advance – You want to make sure you buy your books in advance, and possibly start going through the material to get a head start. For great savings on used nursing books that won’t cost as much as the used ones for sale by your college, or other students, be sure to browse Amazon.com or Half.com. Don’t buy any additional “recommended” books if your school advertises that. Stick with the major textbook for each class and then if your instructor mentions any additional books the first week of class, you can get those too. Schools usually advertise the urgency behind getting all of the books, for obvious reasons, but you’ll already have a huge workload and your instructor may have their own materials to dispense. You can waste a lot of money if you buy all the “recommended” books for every class you enroll in. You’ll be spending quite a bit more money on clinical supplies anyway!

So hopefully these few tips make things a little bit easier for those of you just starting out with nursing school. That’s all for this post, stay tuned for a lot more nursing school tips in future posts.