Nursing School Study Planner

Hey, it's Cathy. In this video, I am going to show you how to use our Level Up RN Study Planner. So in nursing school, you have many assignments and obligations. You have lecture days, you have clinical days, you have care plans, exams, quizzes, papers, and projects. It's a lot and it's super important that you get organized so you can be successful in nursing school. When I was in nursing school, I used the planner that I'm going to show you here today. And it really helped me a lot to get on top of what was due when, and be able to plan my time accordingly. Of course, you can use whatever method works best for you. Some people even like to use a paper planner, which is totally fine, but I'm going to show you my planner. I hope it's helpful for you and you can customize it for your own personal needs.

So if you go to my website leveluprn.com, you will see the following menu here at the top. If we click on resources, then you will get three different options here, dosage calculations, ABG interpretation, and the Level Up RN Study Planner. If you click there, then the following page will come up. Let me just shrink myself down here. And if you scroll down, you'll get instructions for using the planner. So step one is to grab the free planner, which we're going to do by clicking this button down here. Step two is to watch the video, which you're watching now. But if you want to watch it again, you can do it over here on the right-hand side, and then step three is to share your plan. So we would love to see the plan that you put together, and I think it will be inspiring to other nursing students. So they will be motivated to get organized as well. Be sure to hashtag it #LevelUpMyPlan.

Okay. Let's go to the planner by clicking this purple button down here, which will bring up a Google Sheet. This Google Sheet has three tabs. So we have the instruction tab, which we're on right now. The calendar template is the second tab. And the example calendar is on the third tab. So on this instruction tab, it goes through, how do I use this planner? So step one is to watch my instruction video, which you're watching right now. Step two is to either make a copy or download this Google sheet. So this Google sheet is read-only. So we're going to need to make a copy of it in order to modify it. And when we modify it, we're going to make sure we include all of the assignments that we're responsible for. So all of our exam and quiz dates, our care plans, our assignments, skill testing, etc. And then when we're done, we can take a screenshot of our plan and share it with others. You can also print it, which we'll get into later. And then, yeah, over here are some printing instructions, which I will go into when we actually create your custom planner.

Okay. So the second tab here is the actual template, which is blank. This is where you'll be filling in all of your assignments and classes. To give you a feel for what this looks like, we've included an example calendar, which is really my calendar from the summer of 2015. So you can see here, I put 2015 for the year, what semester I was in. So for me, that summer semester I had three classes. I had OB, Peds, and Leadership, and it was condensed into a 10-week schedule. So it was really important for me to get organized. So for each course, I put that information in the column. So my first course was this is my Peds clinical course. Which was Nursing 333. And that took place on a Monday. So I just fill that information in, and then I had my OB clinical class, which was on a Wednesday. And I filled that information out. And then I had all of my lectures on a Friday. So my Peds, OB, and Leadership classes all have lectures on Friday. So you can see I broke them out all here. And in addition, I had my Leadership clinical class on a Friday. So you can tell my Fridays were super fun that semester.

Okay. And then, for each week, so this was my first week of the semester, I put what is due for that week. So for Peds clinical, I had skill testing that very first week. And then for OB clinical, I had a math exam as well as skill testing. And so, as you look down here you can see each week what is due for each of these classes. I've also added in these extra rows between weeks. To include study goals you may have, to help you stay ahead of the material. So I just put some examples in here of like watching videos and reading study cards from Level Up RN. Of course, I did not have those when I was in nursing school. But rest assured, if I had access to them while I was in nursing school, I totally would've used them. So, you can put your goals here, you can also include like if you're going to do a study group with your friends, that's always a good idea. If that's how you like to study. So here I included like a Peds study group number one on Saturday morning.

So again, you're going to be filling out all of this information with your specific data. Your classes, your assignments, etc. And that's here on the calendar template. So again, because it's read-only, we're going to copy it, you can either download it to-- so you can download the file to Excel if you prefer that. But if you just want to copy it to your Google Drive, then you can hit, "Make A Copy," and then I can just go here to the folder, out of My Drive, Level Up RN Connect. Decide where you want to put it. And I'll select that, and say, "Okay." And it's going to copy it over to My Google Drive, and here I can modify it to my heart's content. So, I go to the calendar template, let's say I'm filling it out for this fall. So I would say 2019. And this is for the fall. Should be a great idea to get this done. And let's say I have Med-Surg. So maybe my Med-Surg 1 lecture is on a Monday. I would fill that in. Let's say my-- Med-Surg clinical-- is on a Tuesday. Put that there. Right? And then I can say my-- I have my Pharmacology lecture on this day, on Wednesday. And so on.

So, for each of your courses, you're going to fill that out for each column. And then you're going to put your dates here, so this would be Week 1. This row. So depending on when your semester starts, you would fill in these dates, and then you would start filling in your assignments. So for Med-Surg lecture, maybe I need to read chapters one through five before class starts. And for clinical, maybe I have some skill-testing right out of the gate. I can put that there. And etc. And then maybe I have some study goals. So using the Level Up RN cards or videos, maybe I want to try to go over Med-Surg nervous system cards and videos this first week. To just try to stay on top of things. So again, you can fill all this in, until it's all the way done. And if you want to print it-- so I personally like to print my plan and have it posted on the wall behind my workstation to really have it front of mind, so I know exactly what is due when. You can click here and click the print button. What you want to make sure the settings are set up correctly. So you want to make sure you're on the current sheet, make sure it's in Landscape View, and make sure the scale is fit to width. So again, we're-- it's going to be multiple pages, which is fine. You need multiple pages to kind of have all that information. If you try to condense it into one page, it's not going to be readable. But we do want the width of the document to be on one page.

So, from here, once you make sure all your settings are set up, you can print it. You can also just access it electronically, you don't have to have it printed out. It's just a personal preference. So I hope this video has been helpful, I hope that you find value in the Level Up RN Planner, and I can't wait to see some of the plans that you all create. Take care, and good luck studying!