Another recap

I took NCLEX yesterday morning. I got there about 7:30am and was the seventh person in line. They started checking people in about 7:35 or so and it was probably 3 minutes or so per person to get them processed. I started about 8:02 and by question 6 I was sure that I would be the one person that wouldn't even get to question number 75 because if I knew NOTHING up to then- it must know. Really, I was shocked at how little material I felt comfortable with. Then I started getting some SATAs, some math, a few picture and order questions and I figured that I must have done something right to that point because I had read that those were a good sign that you're above the passing mark. I'm generally a fast test taker- but I told myself I had six hours and I didn't care how long it took I was going to take my time and thoroughly read and think about everything. I wasn't even looking at the question numbers, but I happened to look up and see 74. I'm glad I looked because I finished that question and got the blue screen, 75 and done. I looked at the clock at it was 8:55am. I thought I was going so slow, but apparently not. I was in my car at 9:02 and when I tried the PVT trick at 10:15am I got the good pop-up. (Of course I was a little panicked that it could have been wrong and tried to check allnurses and the website was down- ugh!) I've done it a couple times since then and it's the same. I'm now stalking the BON site for my license info. Overall for the exam I felt like many of the questions I was left with a 50/50 guess. There were a few meds I hadn't even seen, but I tried to figure out their class from the name so I could guess at the possible side effects. Even my math questions (which are normally my favorite!) weren't quite as straight forward as I had expected. Anyway, I know some people like reading stories from those that finished, so I hope this helps.

As for my prep. I've done decently throughout school- A-B student, but didn't study very much. During the last two semesters, about the only studying I did was the NCLEX questions from Saunders 5th edition, Brunner and Suddarth (med-surg), Varcariolis (psych) and any random free NCLEX style questions I could Google on a particular subject area. Our school bought us access to NCSBN learning extension's 5-week on-line program as well. Since the first week of June I've mainly done questions (but I also work full-time and have three kids, so I'm talking 1-2 hours at most). I learn better from that than from reading notes and outlines so I decided that would be my best bet. I did 75-250 questions or so a night using NCLEX-4000, Saunders and learning extension. I found the link to the Kaplan sample tests and took all of those as well. I definitely felt less confident in pharm than in other areas, so I did some review reading from Saunders and my pharm book for that. I found I did much more poorly on the learning extension questions, but I think they turned out to be most like NCLEX (makes sense since they write the test I think). They had more questions with two very similar answers, which I found frustrating because I almost always picked the wrong one! But reading all the rationales must have helped in some way.

Anyway, my best wishes to all of you with upcoming exams. Waking up this morning without this looming over my head was the best feeling I've had in years. Of course I'll feel a little better when my license is posted, but I'm confident enough. All you can do is your best.