Managing Your Student Nurse Assignments

When looking over my assignments for this current week, I noticed that I have been assigned to read 24 chapters spread between three classes. This is not an unusual amount of reading in my third semester of nursing school, but it can feel a little overwhelming in comparison to the caseload of other homework I could be doing.

So what can you do in this situation? One of the best things that I have found is to talk to the teacher directly. It is so easy to complain about the assignments and stress about finishing them, but it is so much easier to know first hand what the teachers are looking for. Most teachers will tell you honestly that, no, it is not vitally important to read every word assigned to you, but at least have a good idea of what the chapters are about and what the key terms mean. This can really help the material sink in when sitting in a lecture. Also, finding out what your teacher wants you to get out of the reading can sometimes cut your reading time in half and can enable you to retain it rather than suffer through it, forget it, and then have time wasted.

This is not to say, however, that all teachers are like this. There will be a few teachers that think that it is important to read all of the reading that they have assigned. In my case these are usually the ones who test more heavily on the reading material than on anything else. I have had quite a few classmates struggle in classes like this as they were used to only studying from the lecture and PowerPoint’s rather than from the reading material. So, again, get the information from the source instead of taking a risk with your grade.

In the long run I think that getting into the habit of reading and learning time management are some of the most important skills to be learned in nursing school. We are to be constantly updating our knowledge of nursing care throughout our careers and what better way to start than now?