So I decided I really didn't want to study for the NCLEX. When I heard you can just take it again, I thought: brilliant. I'll just give it a shot and see if I can do it. If not, I'll disillusion myself of what the test is not and I'll study a bit each day for the next month or so.
Luckily, I don't need to be working right this second, and I'm not in an embarrassing situation where employers are waiting on me to pass.
Wondering if anyone else decided to give it a whirl without studying.
My experience today:
I started out thinking, "Hey, these aren't so bad. Not so bad at all." But by question 50 I was quite ready to be done.
I have a hard time staying interested in tests. Mostly, I think, because they don't scare me, and they certainly don't interest me. I simply find them boring.
Having heard the test could end at question 75, I had high hopes. Real high hopes. These soon turned out to be hopes made of wishful thinking. Question 76 arrived. Then 77...99...110....150...180...I soon realized the test was on to me and I wouldn't be let go until I'd received every delicious question it had to offer.
Around question 240 I seriously just wanted to walk away, it was becoming so tedious. 265. Finally. Test ended. Whew. That's a lot of questions if you're not used to that kind of question load. Took me five hours. I didn't take any breaks because I didn't want to run out of time.
I've since learned you can run out of time and it will just look at your last 60 questions. I also learned that there is no way for the test taker to know whether he/she passed based on how many questions they received.
While I doubt I passed, I honestly have no idea. The fact is, the test kept giving me questions...so I was hovering somewhere around certainty--either just below, or just above. It was basically five hours of guessing.
Oh well. I'll either be very pleased I don't have to study for that test, or I'll frown for a second, laugh, and start going over some questions (and memorizing some lab values, etc.). I think I'd start with that "random fact" thread, only because it seems way more fun to read than actual practice questions.
But if I DID pass, I think it would be really funny. I think the ability to retake the test in 45 days is so generous. I wish I'd just taken the test right away, after graduating, instead of vacationing for a few weeks doing nothing. Then I could be even closer to my second test date. I'm telling my fellow students (who can afford the testing fee x 2) to just take it now and see if they manage--again, if they can afford the time off/fees.
Different strokes for different folks.
Oh yeah--I also had a classmate do this today. We just decided to do it the other day and signed up for the first available test. She scored a 75 (argh, so lucky to be done so quickly, either way) and was out of there.
I don't want to hijack your thread but I almost sorta did what you did which is take the exam without studying. I graduated May of this year from the Philippines and applied for the NCLEX exam. I thought I was just gonna wait for a month or so before I took the exam. So I started reading up on material to prep myself. After 2 1/2 weeks went by and still no reply from the BON, I called and asked on the status of my application. They told me it's gonna take about 16-20 weeks processing for my application to go through. Since we all have to work, I said 'screw that' to myself and set about going about my daily life.
3 months went by quick.
About the second week of September, I suddenly got an email that I am qualified to take my exam. I had already set up a pearson vue account and when I called for scheduling, it was for the 26th. Dang, I had less than 2 weeks to prepare. But due to the nature of the beast, I still had to work. So for the week I had to work and I was so dead tired that I said to myself, I'll study over the weekend and next week.
Unfortunately for me, I forgot that my younger sister's starting college in a university in southern california next week and I had to help her move down south over the weekend and prepare her for school. We were coming from the Bay Area in northern Cali. My mom and I drove my sister down ( I did the driving) and got her actuated in her sardine can of an apartment room. We got her one of those loft beds that we bought on the way south in Bakersfield and it was low enough for her to sit upright on the bed without hitting her head on those low dorm ceilings. That space saver included a desk and several shelves. Great, great thing those loft beds. After the endless trips back and forth UCI and Ikea, we finally got her all set-up. I looked at my watch and it was already mid-afternoon of Monday. Dang. So after the hugs and kisses wishing my sister 4 years of enjoying herself before she faces the 'real world' we set onto our trip north.
Everybody knows the traffic in L.A. and for a Monday afternoon, it was especially horrendous. We got to the Grapevine around 30 past seven and I was looking at 4 1/2 hours more of driving. We still haven't eaten dinner. After what seemed like forever, we finally got to the Harris Ranch in Coalinga and ate. I got the 20 oz porterhouse (I was hungry) and I ordered the filet mignon for my mom, sort of a mini celebration of sorts for my sister's entrance to a good school. I looked at my watch. I had about 2 1/2 hrs more to go.
That steak was heavier than I thought and I was getting drowsier and sleepier by the moment. At around 12 midnight, I had to pull into one of those rest areas since I was alreading slapping myself hard on both cheeks to prevent me from falling asleep on the wheel.. We stayed there till about 4:30 am and continued on from there.
For anyone in the know, the early morning commute from the inland valleys to Silicon Valley is the most awful commute in the Bay Area. 5 lanes of traffic from the Altamont Pass converge to a one lane ramp going southbound 680. Talk about a bottleneck. We got caught up in that and finally arrived around 7-ish . It was a long 13 hr drive from SoCal with a 4 hr nap and a hr dinner in between. I was so sleepy.
Suddenly, my boss calls me up and said I had deliveries for that day. Oh well, I said to myself, duty calls and also pays the bills. I worked all day and finally got to rest in the afternoon. Godfather gave me the next 2 days off knowing that I had my exam on Friday at 2:45 pm. I had swimming classes the next day at noon so I did some practice exams before and after swimming, maybe about five totaling about 75*5 (375). questions. After a while, the words and then letters were beginning to blur and I had to stop. It was hard studying on a PDA.
I decided that the one thing I needed most was rest and sleep and so I slept early the day of the exam. Goodness I was so tired a nuclear holocaust wouldn't wake me up if it happened while I was sleeping.
I decided to forego my usual cup of java since I was already was in a mild state of anxiety and I didn't want anything to push me to panic mode. So with my heightened senses of awareness and intuition, I reviewed/crammed one last time and drove early to the testing center in San Jose...
(ooops, looking at the time, got to work, will continue the story later.):typing
Thats good to be able to feel so confident. and all we know you probably passed. since you were not stressed and anxious but seemed to be totally relaxed. Is there anybody who took the test in Virginia and if so, how long does it take the results to be on the BON. VA does not participate in the quick results
So anyway, I got to the testing center 45 mins early, and went up to the second floor. The receptionist gave me a piece of paper stating the house rules and I scanned it quickly. Oops, can't bring my cough candies into the exam. I asked her if I could buy something to drink before I went in. She said ok. I bought a cool can of diet coke down the hallway, right next to the janitor's closet. I went back to my car, dropped off paperwork and my cough candies and went back upstairs. I had to wait 15 mins more as the testers were helping this other gentleman out who was late for 30 mins. The indian guy reiterated the house rules again and asked for my index finger to scan on the small pale blue and white fingerprint reader they have by what I call the 'control room'. They gave me an erasable magnetic board to write on and a felt tip marker and offered me ear plugs. I took the ear plugs. I didn't need them but they seemed good for a future concert or event.
The indian guy directed me to # 3, the station I chose since it seemed comfy. They don't tell you that the testing area is as cold as a walk-in freezer. Good thing I brought layers as I had a cold. After the usual pre-test questions explaining how to use the computer, I took the test running. Running as in I have no frickin' idea what the question was asking. Anxiety went up a little. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and said to myself, it doesn't really matter if you get all the questions right. All they want to know, and here's the thing they also don't tell you, is if they pass you, would you kill somebody that first day of work? If you won't, then they did their job.
Enlightenment filled me. I know that as ill-prepared as I was, I won't kill anybody knowingly. I'll be terrified to do anything that first day though. . The joys of rationalization in the midst of impending hopelessness.
Normally, I'm a careful exam-taker, reading the question twice before reading the options, looking at the stem and qualifiers, the syntax of the question etc. But for some unknown reason, I sped through the questions like I did with my practice exams, just answered what I felt was right with no proper justification, rationale or anything. Minus the 2-3 dosage questions I had to properly calculate, the rest of the delegations, prioritizations and SATA questions I breezed through. In half of the time I normally would do a similarly-structured exam, I answered twice as many questions. Was I foolish to do that? But, of course ! ! ! Would I do that in a clinical setting, probably not. But I was so sick of waiting that I wanted to get the hell out of that room as soon as possible.
Then came the incessant clicking. Also one thing they also don't tell you is that in that same room, some applicants take other licensure exams or whatever test they need. I didn't know that some of the tests involve typing and clicking the mouse and then more typing. It was driving me nuts. Here I was trying to concentrate, and here was this increasing din in the air of click-click-click-type-type-click-click. Aargh ! ! ! Why can't they be more quiet? I passed the 2 hour mark and still the computer hasn't stopped. I was now cold and irritated and ****** off not because of the exam itself but with that fat asian guy squeaking back and forth on his desk chair and that incessant click-click-click-type-type-click-click. I wanted for the computer to stop and so I could hurry myself away from that dreadful place.
Since I was in terrified-running-away-from-zombies-mode, i didn't look at the time nor the number of questions, I was just scanning then clicking then scanning then clicking hoping that it would all end soon. Thankfully, the computer stopped spouting all these nonsense and I sighed a bit.
I hurried myself out and took a deep breath. That place was driving me nuts. And put my hands in my pant pockets since they were cold. I felt something in my left hand, it was the ear plugs the indian guy offered me. .
I was so glad for the whole experience to be over and to relax, I bought $20 dollars worth of tokens and a hawaiian pizza combo meal at an arcade close to the testing center and drowned myself in flashing lights and weird noises.
I looked at the CA BON permanent license verification yesterday and this morning. I didn't see my name yesterday after the umpteenth time of checking, I started having thoughts of whether I had provided my SSN or did I have anything missing or incomplete from my file. Doesn't matter, as I checked early this morning, with the website saying that the list was updated Sept.30, I saw my name in nice blue colors.. Passing didn't give me much of a relief, I was more relieved when I had those seemingly endless amount of tokens to forget my horrible testing experience.
P.S. My mom was kinda worried for me all throughout the trip south and back since she didn't see me studying or even glancing at my books. I had a cousin who a month before she took the exam, shut off her social life, holed herself in her room and prayed everyday. Not to say that any of that was over the top but my aforementioned effort was so underwhelming for such an important exam. So during my deliveries today, I called her up and asked her if she could check the CA BON to see what the results were even though I knew I had already passed. She said she didn't see anything but I had my name written there with a license expiration of May 2010. I lead her on and she finally realized that she was reading the terms of my license and that means that I had in fact passed since they already gave me a license. She congratulated me and knowing how understated she is, she must have been jumping for joy inside.
After this long-winded account of my NCLEX experience, here are some things I learned:
1. Sleep early. For me, i think that helped the most and this advice if for all you who are working, mothers with kids or just the tired and exhausted.
2. Trust your intincts. You know this. You got this. Now whether you spend all that time having a running conversation in your head for choosing this answer over this one is up to you. I would say blink, then the first answer that pops up is the one you go with.
3. Everybody feels that they failed the exam. Again, this is a very different exam. It's meant to make you feel the way. 50/50 like Two-Face in the Dark Knight Batman movie. It's impartial in its intent or some would say pattern-based. So there's no point in looking for anything positive about it.
4. The test itself doesn't really matter. It's not a question of 'if' when passing the NCLEX to have a license. It's only a matter of when.
5. Finally, my last piece of advice is to leave your cough candies in the car. Have a diet coke instead. It does great for your already ulcerated gastric mucosa.:typing
I've got my fingers crossed for ya. :wink2:
. We stayed there till about 4:30 am and continued on from there. 
. The joys of rationalization in the midst of impending hopelessness.
Why can't they be more quiet? I passed the 2 hour mark and still the computer hasn't stopped. I was now cold and irritated and ****** off not because of the exam itself but with that fat asian guy squeaking back and forth on his desk chair and that incessant click-click-click-type-type-click-click. I wanted for the computer to stop and so I could hurry myself away from that dreadful place.
.
. Passing didn't give me much of a relief, I was more relieved when I had those seemingly endless amount of tokens to forget my horrible testing experience.
or some would say pattern-based. So there's no point in looking for anything positive about it. 
EdwardB4
16 Posts
Good luck!!
I hope it worked out..