Nursing, as a career, is very rewarding. Not only is it remunerative down the road, but it also instills you with an inner satisfaction rarely found in other career paths. You get to dedicate your skills to the immediate wellbeing and care of others.
Think of nursing as an add-on set of skills – you can display your credentials on your resume with pride while also pursuing your other professional interests. Many students, in fact, pursue nursing as a side career or side hustle. Just one thing today is not enough. We live complex, compound lives yearning to do more, be more, and have more.
However, working and studying are not as easy as you might peg them to be. Routines sometimes fluctuate, and assignments collide with submissions at work. Those who opt for this duality in their life are indeed the bravest of the brave.
It becomes easier with nursing, though.
You can study for certain nursing professions online while also working a job. Because of the long hours and strenuous work-life schedule, students opt for online alternatives as they enable them to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
With our four hacks to pursue an online nursing degree while working, we will offer students helpful advice on how they can manage their nursing studies with work.
Maintain a Strict Schedule
The best part about an online nursing degree, or online BSN classes, is that you can come with your own schedule. You will, hence, need to maintain a strict one to keep distractions at bay. Discipline is key here; you can juggle your responsibilities at work and your studies without feeling overwhelmed.
To finish school, you might have to set aside some courses for the weekend or manage your online classes in sync with work to find a needed balance. Like other programs, you can dedicate the usual 15 hours to study per week to manage your study load.
Organize Yourself, Optimize Yourself
Sticking to a schedule and keeping yourself organized go hand-in-hand. In optimizing yourself, take notes of all your scheduled shifts, aligning them with any personal calendar you might have. Conceptualizing what is to come in the future becomes easy to take on new responsibilities. You can sign up for things quickly, knowing what’s currently on your plate and what will be in the future.
Part of being organized means maintaining lists, too. Create to-do lists of all your important tasks and accomplish them promptly. When you are tracking your progress through these lists, you can simultaneously make room for any future tasks or things that need to be done.
We are all aware of how dynamic work can be. Studies can be dynamic, too, so you should read up on any class assignments and expected quizzes beforehand to avoid surprises. When you are this organized, stress and worries go out the window. As a nurse, you will be responsible for people’s medical welfare and wellbeing. You need to be sound in health yourself before looking after others.
Focus On One Thing at a Time
You will notice your productivity wavering when juggling multiple things. You can study all the textbooks you want, but if you are distracted during this studying, you won’t learn much. Multitasking is great and even recommended in this line of work. However, it is not everyone’s cup of tea.
Focusing on one thing at a time helps. With a properly built schedule, you should not feel the need to do two things in one go. For example, if you are in the middle of attending a lecture at work, make sure you are on your break. Similarly, never leave work with incomplete tasks. Never take anything from work back home unless you are working from home. Alternatively, you can work from home to avoid any clash of submissions.
Any disruptions you may face will help you learn, so take them in stride.
Make Use of Technology
Living a dual life as a nursing student and an employee, you must tap into technology to make things easier for you. Modern tech has all the benefits and advantages someone like you needs. Online resources – like this article you are reading right now – and productivity applications can mean the difference between tasks achieved and unprevented disasters.
Download applications like Evernote on your phone and take your notes electronically. You can highlight important concepts during lectures with ease. You can use these apps at work as well. If there is an important email you want to send but are doing some nursing school work, simply transcribe audio to text. All you will have to do is select recipients, proofread – which should not take long – and send it. Similarly, suppose you are to make a report at work from someone else’s handouts or, say, pictures. In that case, you can scan off the documentation any text that you will need.
Technology will make your life as a nursing student and employee easy.
Were these 4 hacks helpful?
It is hard managing two things at once. But online nursing school pairs up really well with other jobs. Having multiple streams of income is also beneficial. Once you graduate from nursing school, you will realize that all the struggle was worth it. But make sure you don’t overwork yourself because working smart takes preference over working hard.
Make sure you come up with a schedule you cannot deviate from. Be very organized with all of your school assignments and exams and your tasks at work. Do not try to multitask if you can’t without compromising the quality of your work. Stick to one thing at a time to keep stress and worry at bay. And lastly, make sure you ease things up for yourself by using technology. Your phones are there for more than just calls, texts, and checking social media. Make sure you use productivity apps to accomplish tasks faster.
With all said and done, we’ll see you soon at the end of the finish line.
