You studied for hours, days, or even WEEKS and you just failed an exam. Guess what? You’re human and failure happens to the best of us. Instead of beating yourself up over a grade, try to learn from that exam to help you moving forward. I know you’re feeling down on yourself and it feels like your world is ending but let me be the first to tell you that Nursing exams are like no other! If you’ve already taken a few, you know exactly what I’m talking about. All of the answers can be “correct” but which one is the “most correct”? It seems absolutely absurd, right? Nursing exams are HARD! I know students that made all A’s in their prerequisite courses and failed a few nursing exams. You’re not stupid. You’re not worthless. Your world is not ending.
If you really want to get past this exam and improve as a student, you’ll need to ask yourself a few questions. What was your plan of study for that exam? How did you study? Did you re-write your notes? Did you listen to a recorded lecture multiple times? Did you use quizlet…YouTube…read your textbook? Think about everything you did to prepare for that exam and don’t (I repeat DON’T) study that exact same way for your next exam. Just because a fellow classmate reads the textbook, re-writes their notes, and makes A’s doesn’t necessarily mean that’s how YOU should study. You need to study in a way that benefits you the most. If you’re in a rut and looking for a new way of studying, I recommend trying something called active recall. This is the method that I finally figured out works for me. But once again, everyone learns differently. I’ll post a YouTube video explaining this learning method if you’re interested in checking it out. He explains it much better than I would so I’ll just post the link here.
