first day of summer break...and it sucks!!!!!!!!!!!

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well here i am...i finished up my one and ONLY final today (my nursing final) and i sit here on my FIRST evening of summer break and i must say that i am not happy :mad: can i just say how much i HATE nursing school sometimes?? i mean, i know we all hate it at one point or another..the constant stress, late nights, information overload, being isolated from friends, family & significant others...but today on a day where i should be excited and ready for a well-deserved break, i am NERVOUS.

i went into my final with an 83%..i even got an A on my last test, and passed every single test but one (i was 1% away from passing)..you think i would be glad that i set myself up okay to pass (passing is a 77% or a 76.5% technically)...all i had to do was get an 80% on the final to keep my B or a 60% on the final to get a C...so after being up late, waking up early, heart palpitations, nerves, panic, and what seemed like 1000 hours of studying later i finally sat down my books this afternoon and just thought "okay bring it on!"...i get to class and 15 minutes before the final begins, A FIRE ALARM GOES OFF!!! UGHHHHH! so i spend the 20-30 minutes before class that i could be preparing myself mentally in a quiet room...feeling relaxed and letting all the information settle..but instead im standing outside, my mind feels like a sloshing fishbowl at this point, and i can't even bring myself to look at my notes another minute.

so after the fire alarm business is taken care of i go back and feel half-prepared to tackle this final...as soon as i am handed the test and i flipped it over, the trembling of my hands said it all. this could be bad. 75 questions...4 which were math (easy)...many were "select all that apply"(not easy)..i felt like screaming. why is it that infomation seems so black and white when you are studying and then when it is put in test-question form you feel like your mind is jumping through hoops to come to some kind of answer. i felt the test questions were just out in left field...everything i assumed would be black and white, felt gray, light shades of gray, and some more gray.

sorry for the rambling but i just feel like when i came out of the test that it was a hit or miss..i felt like i did my best but in a way i dont know if it was good enough. how can you prepare yourself for a test and go in feeling pretty confident and then walk out feeling defeated, confused, and terrified of what your future holds?? nursing is such a constant weight on my shoulders..i love it, but i hate it at the same time. if i didn't make my 60% then i don't move on..i have to reapply. it is soooooo frustrating because i have worked so hard to get here. a 60%!?!? who can't get a 60% on the final???...me, possibly...

i just dread looking at my grade tomorrow..if i don't pass it changes so much..i will be so disappointed that i let myself go from an 83% to below a 76.5% all in a few hours. i felt pretty good about my odds..now i feel like sh*t. ughhh...nursing, WHY?!?!??!! :eek:

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Take a few deep breaths.... there is nothing you can do to change what has already happened. If you failed, well then you failed and no amount of freeking out is going to change that, so sit back, put on your favorite album, have a glass of wine and enjoy the free time while you have it.

PS- I TRULY doubt you failed. I get myself all worked up about this stuff too, and more often than not I do just fine.

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You sound a little stressed out. :eek:

Just remember you studied and did your best. I felt the same way at my A&P final last week. I was sure it was my worst exam yet and it turned out to be my second best. Hang in there until the results come back.

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Sometimes I feel like that too when I leave a test. I start going over the questions and answers in my head and second guessing myself. Or I go home and look up stuff in my notes and my book and drive myself crazy!!! I am sure you did better than you think you did. Good luck and update us tomorrow when you get your grade! :hug:

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Just know that you are not alone in this one. I am currently in the same situation. My last final was today. Grades won't be posted till tomorrow. I had an 84 going into the exam (i found out later I had an 85, but that is not the point). In my school the lowest C is an 80 (an 86 is a B). I was and still kind of am worried about it. Before going in to the exam from the time I woke up till I got the test in front of me I was really worked up. I really believed that God was with me. When i started to do the test I began to shake. lol. When I finished the exam I was some what optimistic about it. 3 or 4 hrs after i started to doubt answers I put. On our exam we had 100 questions no math and you could only miss 20. What I'm currently doing is taking a look at my life and telling my self I don't think this is the end. I really don't think God would challenge me to have faith in him and let all the faith that I have now go to waist and just let me fail. I really think their are more pages to this chapter of my life and I truly believe it only gets better. =)... Maybe it's the same way with you......I'm thinking about other ppl's lives who believe in God and seen the struggles that they went through and how they handled them and seen how God pulled through for them.... What I've come up with is those that truly believe that God will help them have succeeded and those that did not believe aren't living happy lives. Some thing I saw today on my clinical instructor's desk calendar was the bible quote that says something a long the lines of by the amount that you believe you shall recieve. I don't know the bible verse number or anything. Underneath it, it talked about faith. I found that it was God talking to me and asking me do you really believe in me. Nursing school is really hard. Take it from a person that is repeating a nursing class bc her classes didn't transfer, but if you allow God to work through you and in you nothing is impossible. In faith let us keep our eyes on him..... More than likely we passed!

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Specializes in Hopefully future pediatric nurse.

I felt the same way today! While I was taking my final today I was thinking, " Oh I failed, I failed!" We take our exams online and we can't go back on questions ( just like nclex) , the good thing is that we find our grades out right away! It turns out I got a 84 ! You know I was excited :yeah:

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I'm feeling like this today too. I actually think I did okay on the med-surg final that we took yesterday but am actually kind of nervous about what my final grade will be in community based nursing. I admit I kind of blew off that course to some extent because it doesn't seem as "important" as med surg. I mean, some of the stuff in CBN is important to know, but I'm just not sure that knowing a bunch of details about it is be-all-end-all. Anyway, the final today didn't seem that bad, but my grade is not that hot going in. I think I probably passed it but I might have a C (am used to A's and B's).

It didn't help that right before the final, one of the instructors handed out our grades for a project we had to do. I was expecting a pretty good grade...hah...she gave me a failing grade (74). Yikes! So I was feeling pretty cruddy about that and then had to take the final! Nice! :uhoh3: I really thought I did okay with that assignment and although I can acknowledge some of her criticisms, I think she kind of raked me over the coals a little bit much. I just kind of feel a little crazy because I thought I did well and the instructor had a totally different idea. Kind of a punch in the gut and makes me doubt myself.

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I have felt like this so many times too! It seems like with so many of the classes I work so hard and things never end up going the way i want/expect them too. Many times I feel like I put in way more efffort than I should. But at the end of the day everyone says the same thing...just think abot the end result it will all be worth it when its over!

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Specializes in ER/Acute Care.

hi sophie,

i just wanted you to know that you have more company than you think. i had a final today that made me tear up after turning it in, lol. all of that hard work! i guess we shall see how things turn out. just remember, we're praying, working hard and giving it our best. that's all that can be asked for. the rest will come out in the wash...

:hug:

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breath!! just breath!! you'll be fine. I hate all this waiting too but hang in there honey your not alone.

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I was basically in the same position as you for one of my classes (I was in first year BScN.) We needed a 63% to pass the course, and I needed a 59% on the final to achieve that or I failed my entire first year. Someone called in a bomb threat on our exam (so irritating!) and we had the chance to rewrite the exam. I really didn't want to rewrite because I was burnt out after 6 exams (and it was scheduled the day after our A&P final), but I was freaking out at the possibility of losing the whole year.

After all that anxiety, I got an 82%!

We've all been there. These rules about marks are crazy.

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Well good luck to, it seems that you would have had to screw up really bad in order to fail.

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