Hi everyone. I’m an LPN student in an accelerated program in New York, and I’m probably going to be dismissed from the program (with few others). I’m not the smartest student, but I’m hardworking, and English is not my first language. I’m not trying to make excuses for failing; I just want some honest perspective.
We have ONLY ONE instructor who teaches basically both pharmacology and med-surg. She’s in her early 70s and has a very old-school teaching style. And before anyone says I’m judging her because of her age, that’s not the point. She’s simply a very bitter and harsh person, and she’s not particularly nice to students.
She’ll give us 60 to 130+ pages and say, “Study this, it’s easy, you’ll pass.” But our textbooks have chapters that are often 50–70 pages each, and an exam can cover 4–5 chapters, meaning hundreds of pages.
Then if something appears on the exam that wasn’t in the material she specifically told us to focus on, she’ll say, “You should have studied the books they gave you.” So which is it? Study the material you tell us to study, or study hundreds of pages for every exam?
I understand nursing school is supposed to be difficult. But when students come to her for help, we sometimes get responses like, “It’s easy, you should figure it out,” or even, “If you can’t figure that out, I don’t think you deserve to be a nurse.”
It’s also not just me struggling. A lot of students are failing compared with last semester, when apparently the situation was much better.
She is very political. There have also been comments about male nurses, immigrants, and Asian people that have made students uncomfortable. I don’t want to make accusations I can’t prove, but some comments have definitely raised eyebrows. Since she’s the only instructor teaching these major subjects, students are scared to complain because she has so much control over our grades.
I’ve also been dealing with depression and anxiety because of things that happened at school, which obviously hasn’t helped me academically. But I’m not blaming her for everything. I know my grades are ultimately my responsibility.
So I’m asking current/former LPN/RN students:
Is this normal nursing-school behavior, or does this sound unusually bad? How much instructional support should students reasonably expect from their instructor? And what would you do if you were in a program where the only instructor teaching your major subjects was someone you felt uncomfortable reporting?