The Cummings Family: NCLEX...To be a nurse, or not to be?

Saturday, February 4, 2012

NCLEX...To be a nurse, or not to be?

Well, here it is....On February 2nd at 2:00 p.m., after having my finger prints taken repeatedly and an FBI background check, I marched myself into the Pearson Vue testing center for the exam that would determine whether I had wasted thousands of dollars and five years of my life on college. Although it was way worse than I could have ever imagines a test could be I can't complain to much because it only lasted two hours for me. It was an adaptive test which means if you get a question right it gives you a harder one, but if you get it wrong it goes back to an easier one. You would think, well, that's okay easy questions are good, but with this test in order to pass it you have to have more right than wrong in the upper level questions and really when you are sitting there you have no idea which questions are harder or easier and it doesn't tell you if you are getting them right or not.

Going into the test the only information that we had been given is that we will receive a minimum of 75 questions up to a maximum of 265 questions. We have exactly 6 hours to complete the exam whether we reach 265 or not. So, you get more questions the more you get wrong, it's like the computer keeps giving you another chance to get them right until you reach the maximum number. But if you have shown the computer that you can get more right that wrong in the upper level questions it will shut off when it is confident you won't kill a patient :). The other hand it true too, it will also shut off before 265 if you are really bombing it.

So, I walked all confident into that testing center sat down to answer my first question and I had no idea what the answer was! I thought, "this is it, this is what kills me, this test!" As I huffed my way through the test and reached question 75, the minimum number of questions you can have, my heart was literally pounding out of my chest. When it shut off my first thought was, "NO! Give me another one, I can do better, don't fail me!"

Have I drug this out long enough? No, well to top all this off you have to wait two days to find out if you passed or not. Longest two days of my live. So, here it is.....