Oakton Community College NLN test dates for 2008

Hello to everyone!

I'm a new participant on this site, and I find these forums to be very helpful for new nursing students and anyone, really, continuing in any medical field. It's really great. Thanks to all the many posters!

I have a question, a really basic one, but -- I am hoping to find out if anyone knows when the next NLN exam will be, at Oakton Community College, for 2008. I was told by a admission's advisor that the next one will be this June, but I am really not feeling ready for taking it that soon! I'd love to take it near the end of this year. Kept putting off studying and attempting to even prepare for the NLN until fairly recently, until about two weeks ago. Seems like that is what so many pre-nursing students mention -- getting swallowed up by nerves, worry, and doubt because the exam itself seems so big and overwhelming. It helps, I am now just finding, to go a piece at a time, to really pace yourself carefully, diligently, yeah, but to not cram for it, but also do SOMETHING more than just mope and stay frozen with fear about it. I know I can ace the exam and be ready for it, just not by June of this year! Anyone know anything more or differently? I should have asked my advisor if there's a way to take the exam through an affiliated college, in IL somewhere. Maybe Triton or Harper are also options I may want to try. I completed the Basic Nursing Certification and took the CNA exam and passed. Don't really know if that is graded and you are ranked in that, as well, but that was great to get that over with! All my classmates were there, which was nice, but everyone and myself were incredibly nervous, as we awaited to start our exam!

I began as an artist and an art major, earning a BFA in the fine arts, and did a 180. Now my vocation is nursing and it's really weird, it's like, I wonder who was that person a person who earned that BFA and who once painted and designed for a living? The medical world called -- loudly -- and I answered. My life feels so completely new, joyful, challenging, frustrating, sometimes overwhelming and scary (because of all the info getting crammed between my ears!) and entirely unlimited in its scope and impact. My only downfall is generating better study habits. I procrastinate and then I try and hurry and gulp everything down! I've just been really fortunate and very quick in terminology. Can't say enough, how many times learning the terminology has saved my hide! :) But I want better than that, so it's a biiiiiiiig struggle, yet, but I am finally getting there... Hoping to get into UIC, where, I hear, that school REALLY REALLY kicks your butt if you won't change and really bear down into your classes. They don't allow C grades, for example. Right now, at Oakton, I am taking a whopping 14 credit hours, this summer, and will need to take a lot in the fall, too, to get the right amount of credits to transfer into UIC's nursing program.