You’re busy, you’re working full time in a hospital setting, with kids at home, and you just started your BSN program online. Congratulations! You are moving forward in your career to great opportunities only available to nurses with a BSN degree.
But now life is getting in the way and you’ve gotten off track with your assignments or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Maybe you don’t have enough time, or can’t keep up with the pace of meeting your deadlines. Maybe that excitement you felt when you were first accepted into the program is no longer there. Now you’re wondering “What did I get myself into?”
Not to worry. If you’ve gotten off track for whatever reason or if you’re about to start your BSN online degree soon, here are 3 common sense tips to help you:
1. Time – This will always be changing because things happen that you’re not aware of. It’s not about finding the time but about using the time you do have effectively. We are all busy but how we spend that time is not always the best use of our time.
Ask yourself “What is keeping me from doing what I need to do?” Write it down. Keeping a daily nursing journal can help you track how you are spending your time. Where can you make adjustments, delegate to someone else or block smaller chunks of time to get a project done? When seeing it in writing you’ll get a big picture of what your time wasters are. Now make adjustments and move forward.
2. Style – Do you know what your learning style is? When I was taking courses online, I thought I was a visual learner but I found out quickly that I prefer to listen. I’m an audio learner.
There are 3 different learning styles:
- If visual is your learning style, try drawing pictures of what you’re learning or look at the graphics and put a mental picture or movie in your mind’s eye to visually see what you are learning. Also using a whiteboard to write out your notes is great for the visual learner.
- If auditory is your style, read the text aloud and record yourself reading the text. You can use your smartphone to do this and take your assignments with you when you’re on the go so you can listen when you’re walking the dogs or at your child’s soccer game.
- If tactile/kinesthetic is your style, try printing out your assignments or projects and highlighting or taking notes in the margins or even writing in your books. You can also walk around and do your reading. A tactile/kinesthetic learner likes to be moving around when learning.
3. Communication – Be a really good communicator by email. Learn how to use it and use it often to ask questions, connect with other students, facility members and the online nursing community at the school you are attending.
Email will be how you communicate in the online world of education. If you’re not communicating your message in a clear, concise and focused manner you won’t get the answer to your burning questions. So learn to write what you want clearly. Get to the point right away, again not wasting anyone’s time, including yours.