KEP1

Hi Everyone, It's really good to hear everyone come out about their experiences with the NCLEX. It doesn't surprise me that very good students don't pass. I think that the expectations you place on yourself, as well as from your peers and the faculty, can really effect your performance because everyone just expects you to pass. Some people try to argue that if you can't handle the pressure of the NCLEX then how can you handle the job, but I have learned from experience that the two are not related at all. I am very confident in my work and it has no reflection on the nervousness I felt during the exam. Congrats to those who passed, and I'm waiting for those who haven't to one day be my new fellow co-workers! If anything, the experience of failing has made me a better, more cautious and compassionate nurse. Who knows, with the way I was in school (so competitive and hung up on grades), maybe it saved my career to not march into nursing with a cocky attitude. My preceptor had once told me that in all her years experience, those were the nurses that came out of nursing school making the most serious mistakes. -KEP1

Hi everyone, I just wanted to let people know that I was an A student in school and I graduated with highest honors. I worked my butt off to be at the top of my classes, and was even granted the opportunity to co-teach classes and head my own fully funded research team. It was very humbling and terrifying to go into the NCLEX feeling as if everything I had ever worked for was on the line and fail, and then fail again. Not to mention I was a single parent, so I had my children depending on my passing. The magnitude of these failures had a huge impact on my emotional well being. I did every single review book imaginable. I KNEW the material and I could perform at home and in review courses, despite people claiming that maybe I didn't know it as well as I thought. After two failures, and reading some of the absolutely ridiculous forums on here from fellow nurses saying that they wouldn't want to be cared for by someone who had failed the NCLEX more than 2x, I decided to leave nursing all together. I literally stopped studying for months and my anxiety subsided over time as I came to terms with my new decision. I felt horrible though. Not to point fingers (but not that you can help it at that point), but I started thinking about all the people in my nursing program who barely squeaked by, and cut every corner to get ahead, and yet still passed on the NCLEX on their first try. I started wondering to myself if I'd really want those people caring for me in the hospital. So, on a whim, and on the continued pressure of friends and family, I decided to try again. I went into the NCLEX and literally gave it my best/weakest effort. I know that must not make sense, but I think that not seeing myself as a nurse, really helped me forget what I had to lose. To my complete and utter surprise, and contrary to what the review classes warned, I passed. I wanted to share this story for two reasons. First, anyone out there who has failed must know that the NCLEX is NOT a reflection of your intelligence or ability to be a good nurse. I know plenty of nurses out there who really shouldn't be in the field and they passed on their first time and they are terrible with patients and make many mistakes on the job. I am not discrediting those who are great nurses and have passed on the first time, but I just think that the NCLEX itself doesn't "make" the nurse per say. Secondly, the one thing I regret in how I did everything was that by losing confidence in myself and walking away from nursing, I made it extremely difficult to come back to it after I passed. I had a lot of thinking to do and it was a hard decision to come to. If I could do it all over again, I wouldn't have let the things I did bother me and I wouldn't have walked away. For anyone out there who hasn't passed, I am truly sorry. Please know that there are plenty of nurses out there who will always support you and know that you are much more than an exam, which hardly represents all that you covered and worked for in nursing school. If you can, try not to make the mistake I did in walking away from it. It has taken a lot of hard work for me to come back to it and believe I can do it, and now I think I am an amazing nurse. It's a great thing I came back! -Kep1