 Cheers everyone, happy summer. Actually like we're halfway into summer and with COVID like I'm sure a lot of your guys' semesters were very awkward in the end and you probably were doing a lot of your stuff at home anyways but it's summer and that's exciting. I loved summer break from nursing school because I like gotta take a break. I could just focus on other things and I like decompress from like all of the stress of constant clinicals and assignments and tests and everything that nursing school entails but I don't know about you guys, during summer break I was always like super freaked out that I would forget everything that I had already learned and I would like literally lose sleep over and be anxious like am I just gonna forget everything and then go back to this next semester and it's gonna be like starting all over again and so I wanna talk about this because I feel like so many of you probably feel this way and I want to talk about what we can do to not lose all we've learned from our previous semesters over the summer how we can like stay in the game but also enjoy your summer because that's important too but before we get started I want to mention that this video is sponsored by PicMonic which we're gonna talk about how to use PicMonic to help you not lose all that you've learned over the summer because they are a great resource to help you do this and just a little sneak peek there will be a discount code in the description box below so you can try out PicMonic for free which is an awesome deal and great for the summer when you are out of nursing school. Okay, so first and foremost if you are in between semesters over the summer right now enjoy yourself like you just know that like it's okay to take a step back from school don't be crazy like me and feel like you need to study every single moment of your summer break because summer is meant to be summer for a reason you're supposed to enjoy some time with friends decompress, travel, relax like be out of your normal school routine for a hot minute and so don't feel guilty by enjoying yourself it's okay to take a little break and whatnot but I also think it's important to just keep your feet in the water a little bit like don't get too dry and like totally step outside of the water it's important to just kind of keep your toes wet so I wanna talk about this portion so first and foremost my favorite way and I have mentioned this in a million videos in the past so if you've been following me you know that I have said this a lot my favorite way to study is to do questions and I like to take questions because I feel like it's a good way for me to like test what I already know but it's also a good way to learn things that I didn't already know and my favorite resource right now for questions is Hands Down Picmonic guys this is the perfect, perfect, perfect resource for you if you're on summer break right now and it's great for nursing school I wanna talk about a couple of features that you can use over the summer to really help you not forget your information but also give you a little step up moving forward sorry, had to get my last little drink of coffee there so a couple of great things about Picmonic one is they have a bunch of end collect style questions on there to help you prepare one for the end collect but also just in general in nursing school to test what you already know, to test your knowledge and they have the rationales with the questions so if there's something that you don't know you can read up on the rationale but the great thing is you can always use these rationales to reference another Picmonic so Picmonic is essentially like a visual nursing school guide they have a bunch of pictures and video stories to help you remember information it makes learning super fun, super easy and you honestly don't feel like you're learning because they tell these creative stories to help you remember things like for example, hypertension they will tell a story to help you remember what that is what medications they use to treat it why it happens what are the risk factors associated with it what are you gonna see and it just makes learning super, super fun the other way you can use Picmonic is they have a ton, a ton, a ton of the common nursing school textbooks on there and they have Picmonics linked to all of the sections in the textbook so for example, let's say you find out what your textbooks are gonna be this coming semester you can go on Picmonic and you can start briefly reading over the information and using the Picmonics to kind of give you a little step up when you're heading into your new semester I think what's important during the summer is to set maybe 30 minutes to an hour a couple times a week where you just sit down and you go over some old information that you learned in previous semesters or also new information that you're going to be learning in your upcoming semesters and Picmonic is a great way to do that because you can do it from your phone you can do it from a tablet you can do it from your laptop so wherever you are, maybe you're on a road trip and you just wanna take 30 minutes in the car ride and go over some old NCLEX style questions or maybe you're like, hmm, I really struggled with my OB semester so I am going to go on and search for OB types of questions in Picmonics and just do a couple of those and they're so short they take only a couple minutes for each Picmonic so really you can go on and maybe do five Picmonics and then be done I love the versatility of Picmonic because really it can suit whatever you wanna do make sure you check out Picmonic there'll be a link in the description box below and you can start trying them for free okay, let's talk a couple other things that you can do this summer to help you with not losing all that you've already learned from your semesters you can bring out those old notes I hope you didn't burn them literally I think at the end of nursing school I went through and I had a pile of notes like you can't really see but like probably a good foot, foot and a half tall and a stack of flashcards about this high and honestly I think I shredded it all I don't know, I don't remember what I did but I don't have it anymore clearly but don't do that read over your notes redo some of the flashcards that you've been doing and get together with your nursing school friends and take an hour or so and just go over information and one things that my best friends in nursing school and I did is we would quiz each other I would go through our notes and I would be like can you tell me the difference between a STEMI versus a non-STEMI and they would answer the questions and then I would like if they missed something like added in and that way we were both learning the information at the same time and then they would quiz me as well and we literally would know our notes front and back for the test because we studied so hard so you can do that over the summer with your buddies when they come over, study up go through your old notes, make it fun maybe have a little drink and yeah sit by the pool and enjoy yourself I hope this video gives you guys a couple little tips to help you out please try out Picmonic it's the perfect resource for summer just to like have something on the go that's easy and quick and you don't have to be so deeply invested in it over the summer because it's summer you should enjoy yourself you can just do a little 30 minutes here 30 minutes there to help you just stay refreshed and up and ready for the next semester I hope you guys are enjoying your summer break let me know if you have any questions and I will see you guys in my next video bye