Struggling

You need a book on test-taking strategies. Also, remember ABC's Airway, breathing, circulation. Remember Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Also, stop re-reading. This is not a memorization exam. You need to apply what you're reading. The only way to do that is to do practice questions. Find other books that have questions and do them. Read the rationales to all your questions and write down the ones you got wrong. Look up the concept behind the questions you got wrong in your NCLEX review book to understand the intervention or assessment that you didn't understand so next time you will get it.

When I walked home in grade school, I sometimes played a game. First, I'd simply walk along the curb going to my house. Then I'd imagine that same curb was on the edge of a cliff and that the pavement just six inches below was actually a churning sea a thousand feet below.

I could walk that curb with ease when I was just seeing the curb and street. But when I imagined that sea far below, I'd fall within the next few steps. As a kid, I found that quite funny. It illustrates just how vivid my imagination can be.

I suspect you're in a situation where that same thing is happening, but it's not funny at all. Fearing failure you freeze up during tests and can't perform at the level you should. That probably explains why you misunderstood the questions on that first test and changed so many answers.

For your second test, you prepared well, but as Strawberryluv suggested, your focus was on study guides and memorization. You were perhaps telling yourself, "I've got to get this down just right." All that anxiety made it hard to actually learn the material well enough that you knew how to handle test questions different from what you studied for. Really knowing is different from merely spitting out answers.

That's why both tests came out like my silly loss of balance on that curb. I knew I could walk along it with ease. I'd been doing that just seconds before. It was only when I imagined all the fearful things that could happen that I lost my balance and fell. You imagine failure and then you fail.

Strawberryluv is right when she suggests that you've got to understand rather than just memorize. I'd also recommend following tips you pick up in the test-taking guides. Study well enough in advance, you aren't tempted to trying cramming the night before. Cramming will only make you more anxious and will probably leave you tired. Not good.

Some suggestions:

1. Learn and practice the relaxation techniques work with you. Use them to get your mind off failure, particularly just before the test starts. Think of cute little kittens playing with a ball of yard or whatever.

2. Talk to your teacher and get her advice, although be careful not to leave her feeling too overwhelmed with responsibility for you. I'm not sure how grades are finally tallied, but see if there's some independent-of-tests work you can do that'll pull those two 66s and whatever you get on this third test up to a passing grade for the course. With one term behind you, perhaps the next won't seem as scary.

3. Finally, there's the never-fail 'or whatever' approach. One way to beat a fear of failure is to accept its possibility and imagine how you'd manage in spite of it. Remember, that "I'm kicked out" does not mean that your name is place on a secret 'never admit as a student' black list than all nursing schools on the planet consult before they accept a student. This is not the end of the world. You can try again.

At the very worst, you might have to delay getting that associate degree you want for a year. That's not the end of the world. Volunteer and get practical experience with people who have diseases such as asthma, so those scary words in textbooks are linked to real people you know. Use that time away from school to study in more relaxed circumstances. Save money for when you return to school. That'll be one less stress. When you get knocked down, get back up and keep moving.

Remember little failures do NOT have to lead to not achieving your hearts desire. Tell yourself, I'm going to keep at this, come what may, until I succeed.

Didn't J. K. Rowlings get twenty some rejection letters before she finally found a publisher who would take a chance on her Harry Potter books. Look at how that turned out.

So don't let these setbacks stop you. Hang in there. You can end up the great nurse you want to be.

--Michael W. Perry, author of My Nights with Leukemia: Caring for Children with Cancer