Just graduated. Waitin to be approved for the Nclex-RN...HELP!!!

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i am scared to death of the nclex. i graduated May and have not opened my book. I am still waiting to be cleared but i am afraid when i do get cleared, iwi ll not know where to begin. Any suggestions please? How did u study for the Nclex those of you that took it this yr or last yr and how soo did you take it after u got approved. Also, what is the best floor to work as a new graduate? thanks in advance guys:)

I probably went about it the wrong way, but I ended up passing with 75 questions in about an hour, so I figured I'd share my strategy:

First of all, I took a month off of studying after school. I owed it to myself to renew my brain a bit (it was FRIED after my last final of nursing school!)... I literally did nothing that was nursing related.

After that month off, I studied from NCLEX question books (Saunders, Rationales and Reviews, etc.) and bought a few flash-card booklets from Barnes and Nobles (they've got a lot of good study aides, but I found the flash cards the easiest cuz I would just throw them in my purse and use them when I had a a free minute!) I didn't open a single textbook to study.... the only thing I used were NCLEX question books. The best one I found was "NCLEX for dummies" which was a huge book with tons of questions!! I never even made it through that book!

I decided to do the cumulative assessments because I didn't want to get through half of the book focusing on specific areas and find myself with 2 days left to finish the rest of the book... with the cumulative, you get them all mixed up and honestly, I learned more from answering the questions than I think I ever did in school... once you read the rationales behind the answers, they all seem to click!!

I'd start studying now, as everyone else has said... but make sure that you're taking time AWAY from studying. If you're studying for hours on end, you won't actually remember anything... you'll just be reading letters on the pages.

And relax.. NCLEX isn't the be-all-end-all... worse comes to worse you CAN take it again and next time you'll know what to expect. But remember, you know more than you think you do... you just have to trust your gut... isn't that really what nursing is all about???

Good luck!

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