The Devil made the NCLEX

I woke the morning of the 12th nervous, but excited for the event that would conclude my nursing studies.  I studied all day and drove to the testing center 30 minutes away in the rain, singing Wicked's "Defying Gravity" and other motivation-boosting songs.  I sat in the car for awhile watching others go in, and eventually got up the nerve to go in.  There was about 8 other girls and one boy sitting there looking just as nervous as I felt.  Although a couple of them were chatting about all the people in their class that had passed, quite arrogantly if you ask me.  I decided to make friends with people and talk since I was nervous. 

The staff fingerprints you, takes a picture, and locks up all your belongings.  You can't even have water in the testing room.  They took me into the testing room which had cameras everywhere and a glass window where the staff watched you and could listen to any sound in the room from their desk. 

I have always been quite good at tests in nursing school.  I have considered myself lucky in my tests because I study very little compared to others and do better than most, and that's good enough for me.  I anticipated the test being challenging, but boy was this a treat.  It is a computer adaptive test, which means that if you answer easy questions right, you get progressively harder questions.  The computer adjusts the difficulty of questions to a point where you are passing most of the questions.  The minimum you get is 75 and the maximum is 265.  It shuts off at 75 if the computer is either confident that you really know your stuff or fail you if you really don't.  I expected to get 75.  When I got to 76, 77, 78 and so forth, I could really feel my blood pressure rising.  I kept shouting in my head, "Are you kidding me??  I don't want to keep doing this!"  By question 200, I hardly cared.  I was still answering questions to the best of my ability, but I resolved that I was answering all 265 and I was in fact failing.  The questions were unbelieveable.  I got Kawasaki's syndrome like 5 times and questions on syphillis like 3 times.  Kawasaki's syndrome is a rare, not well understood disease so I had no idea what the answers were.  There was also a question about Mormons: "Your client is Mormon.  What do you know about their beliefs?" A) They fast the first Sunday of every month. C) They avoid coffee and tea.  This one should have been a breeze, but those are both right.  My Dad told me that he thinks they put those on to just mess with your head, but I would still like to know which one is right.  I chose the coffee and tea one because Mormons don't always fast the FIRST Sunday, but they also drink herbal teas.  I took one break to try and munch on a snack since the test was almost 5 hours long, but when I tried to stick the stupid granola bar in my month, I was shaking so much that I kept missing my mouth and dropping the piece.  The lady at the desk was like, "Um are you okay?"



The computer jarred me when it shut off at 250.  WHAT?? I thought I was answering all of them.  I had been the last one in the testing center for about....1.5 hours already and I felt like the staff was making all sorts of judgements about how dumb I was.  I held back tears as I gathered my things and ran out of the testing center.  I sat in my car for a moment and just sobbed.  Then, naturally, I called the woman who always listens to me whine: my Mom.  The whole way home I cried about how unfair the test was.  My blood pressure was so high the whole day that by the last couple hours of the test, I could feel my neck closing and my head throbbing and I couldn't control it.  Everytime I took some deep breaths, it felt like more blood was rushing up.  I bawled about how unreal the test was.  I really can't believe that that many people actually pass this thing.  I was upset because I knew for a fact that I failed.  I cried for a few hours after and went to bed with swollen eyes.


After seeking support groups on allnurses.com, I had kind of come to peace with it and just decided to not think about it.  Although last night, I kept dreaming about it and wanting to get up at 3 in the morning to see if scores were posted.  Happily, they were posted today at 4 pm.  When I saw the word "Pass", I let out a scream/cry, and once again, started crying.  How in the WORLD???  I don't know how it happened, but I am happy to say that I am officially a registered nurse.  If you want, you can look me up on the Utah RN registry.  I am a legitimate RN.  Finally.  Now I have a life to live and fun to have with nothing else stressing me for awhile.  Thank you all for all the support in the past 2 years of this crazy ride.  And to my Mom for listening to me whine on Saturday. =)