Hi, I was wondering if I should keep quiet about my concerns about my A & P 2 class. I don't feel that I can do well (as in get an A) in a class where students are (perceivably or indirectly) tricked or feeling misled on tests, where 4 or 5 questions out of 40 involve abstract answers.
I don't want to be a 'thorn in the professors side', but I don't do well when exam content is not straightforward such as answers that involve 1) x 2)y 3)z 4) 2 of these can be possibilities.
If the instructor is using methods such as that, there may be issues. Just 4 or 5 questions like that can make or break your grade. There's no curve, and very minimal extras.
You will see a lot of "select all that apply" questions throughout nursing school.
This. I loved multiple choice questions when prepping for NCLEX because I could almost always get them down to 2 answers. The "select all that apply" questions were tough and really tested what I knew, rather than my deductive skills.
We had our first exam and I got in the low 80's. I basically left the class and immediately started to cry, literally thinking I may have a mal-function in the perceptual area of my brain (not being facetious, just being honest). My wrong answers were mostly conceptual questions and involved '2 or more is correct'. I have accepted this now. I guess I was wrong because A & P 1 to me involved very small details and the tests were mostly answers that involved 1)a 2)b 3)c 4)d, with no funny answers. I have accepted this and I am going to live with it.
There is nothing wrong with your brain. You got a respectable grade based on your experience with this type of testing. In time, you will learn how to best approach the question, and your grades will improve. Or not. But don't think of yourself as a failure for a B because honestly when you look around the classroom over the next weeks and months you will see those who disappear because they couldn't reach a B. Training yourself to not look for a simplistic rote answer isn't easy and it's not supposed to be but I bet you can absolutely do it!
Thank you everyone for your feedback I feel so much better that other people have gone through this. I spoke to the professor about this and he got a little agitated. He sort of turned it around on me. Ok. I'll do better on the next test.
Try treating Select all that apply questions like each answer choice is a true/false question. The choices that are false can be eliminated. That saved my butt on NCLEX with almost half my questions being SATA.
I know I'm jumping in a little bit late here, but here goes nothing.
I am a nursing student in my third semester of an ASN program (Only one left after this!) and my first nursing exam one year ago involved a low 80 and some crying as well. Our nursing program's grading scale makes 91 the cutoff for an A, 83 the cutoff for a B, and 75 the cutoff for a C - so not only is it harder to achieve high grades due to the complex content, it is also harder to achieve them due to the grading scale.
I was a straight-A student prior to getting in the nursing program; now my gpa is 3.7 and I have quite a few B's on my transcript. This was very hard for me to accept for the first two semesters, but I have gotten to the point where I realize that B's are not indicative of A) my understanding of the content and B) my potential as a nurse.
Honestly? Nursing school is not easy. We have "select all that apply" questions, we have write-in questions, we have picture questions, we have dosage calculation questions (along with multiple choice). I got an A in A&P 2; nursing classes are much more difficult than A&P ever was for me (or for any of my classmates, for that matter).
The trick questions and alternate format questions are there for a reason - they are testing your critical thinking, honing your reasoning skills, and making you a more discerning individual. One positive way to look at this class is the fact that it's giving you a leg-up for nursing school - you will already have experience with the testing format! If you approach this class and this professor with humility and a genuine desire to learn and grow, it will be incredibly beneficial to you not only throughout school, but throughout your career. Nurses need to be able to think critically - and you can bet your life that there will be more than one correct answer/confusing and conflicting information when you're caring for a patient.
I am not necessarily looking for an 'easy' grade. But I do like the exams to be fair. That doesn't seem 'fair' to put 'two of these can be possibilities'. Really? When many of these words sound a like, and words can be thrown around. I think I will talk to the professor. He doesn't seem to enthused when you do say something.
I hate to break it to you, but MOST of your exam questions in nursing school will have more than one plausible answer, and you will have to pick the most pertinent choice by using critical thinking skills that require you not to just memorize, but to apply and analyze concepts. And there are the dreaded NCLEX-style "Select All That Apply" questions for which you receive no partial credit. Your current professor is trying to incrementally prepare you for nursing school exams.
That is pretty normal in college courses. I had professors made our exams more challenging. They would create a question that is 10% pain in the butt. I often do well on this so I do complain of other style questions but never aired it out. I figured it out how to get through .Anyway, I asked help from my instructor how to master memorization. I can say I have improved a lot.
My input is that you will need to learn this style of question. You can do it. Complaining sometimes is worthless and costs our ambition in life.
bostons
59 Posts
This. I loved multiple choice questions when prepping for NCLEX because I could almost always get them down to 2 answers. The "select all that apply" questions were tough and really tested what I knew, rather than my deductive skills.