Some of you might recognize me from posting back in February and in May. My NCLEX journey f#$%ing sucked ass, okay. NCLEX sucks, plain and simple. I graduated with a 3.5 in Nursing School and in December of 2016, but I was complete and utter garbage at testing taking because my anxiety is terrible. Lmao, I measured my pulse during an exam once and it was 130. Anyways! NCLEX, my journey, what helped me.
First time doing NCLEX? February 11th, 2017 All I used was my friend's UWORLD account. It didn't help much at all because I didn't know what I was studying, I was just reading rationale but not actually comprehending it. For me, I needed something more engaging, and UWORLD wasn't the right fit for me. I failed the exam at 80 questions. So I did pretty poorly. That was in February.
Second time doing NCLEX? May 4th, 2017. I ended up purchasing a **** ton of nursing books, and using Mark Klimek's lectures as well as tons of questions I found online. I purchased UWORLD for myself and tried again. Ended up failing the exam at 265 questions. God, it was terrible. Took me 5.5 hours just to do my exam.
Third time, September 2nd, 2017. And last time, as of today, the 6th of September. I decided to purchase Hurst Review, it was 300 bucks, I printed out the workbook to save 30 bucks. And I watched all the videos and did about 50 questions a day for a month. And honestly, I didn't do so hot on their two assessment exams? But I still went for the NCLEX September 2nd. The first exam I got a 58/125. Second I got a 70/125. They recommended that you test when you get a 77/125 but I didn't wanna postpone my NCLEX. Sat down for the NCLEX, put on those stupid noise-cancelling earphones, asked them for some earplugs too. I used the earplugs as a stress ball, because they're little and foamy and it helped reduce my anxiety by playing with something in my hands. I stopped at 125 questions and was confused, because I didn't feel like the questions were hard? So I wasn't sure if I failed. I had a 30-question case study I had to do after the exam. So, took me about 2 1/2 hours to completed it. My mom came with me, afterwards, we went out for some authentic ramen and frozen matcha yogurt. And the whole ordeal was almost zen? It was amazing. I did the PVT for the first time, had the good pop up. Which I never tried before for my last two exams.
Anyways. I'm officially a BSN-RN, in the state of Illinois at 23 years old and couldn't be happier to start my life in the field of my passion: psychiatric nursing!
Let me know if I can help any of you at all. Don't give up. I needed someone to tell me not to give up, and that was my mom. And it helped so much.
