Mary’s Pad

SO…. I’m back! My big exam is done, and I passed! I am really glad I did because if I hadn’t, I would have had to remediate, which means to go over the areas that I came up lacking in and then retake the exam. Considering that I am now knee-deep in my final semester and learning all about dysrhythmias and other interesting stuff like that, I really didn’t want to have to do that. I promised that I would write a nice update about what’s been happening so far, and I will, but first I want to talk a bit about this predictor exam.

The NCLEX RN Predictor exam that we all had to take is issued by ATI, an educational materials and testing provider company that is like Kaplan. The exam consists of 180 questions (and I am sure it probably varies year to year), and covers all disciplines of nursing, basically everything I have learned since Fundamentals, through Med-Surg, into Obstetrics, Pediatrics, Community Health, Mental Health, and even the stuff we are learning this semester… Leadership and Management, Critical Care and Emergency Nursing. Of course this puts us at a disadvantages because there are some questions on there that we just won’t know the answers to, but the rationale to taking the predictor exam now is that we have already covered the bulk of the material, and the results show us what areas we need to focus on, our Achilles heel. The results are grouped on a scale to predict your likelihood of passing the NCLEX-RN exam the first time around.

I opted to not do any studying or preparation for this exam even though we had all summer. The main reasons were that I was busy with work, I was tired, and I also decided it would be kind of neat to see how much material I had retained from all my classes. I did start getting a little nervous and tense when the semester started and I saw and heard how much people had been studying through the Summer, but by then I only had a week and it was too late.

Anyway, I passed the exam and fell into that bracket of people who are 99% likely to pass the NCLEX exam on their first try. That made me happy. The point here is not that I’m smart, but that we often underestimate how much material we retain. We tend to lose confidence in ourselves and stress out, driving ourselves crazy with fears and worries. But the fact of the matter is that more often than not we are capable of a lot more than we give ourselves credit for. I am not advocating tossing caution to the wind and not preparing ourselves for the challenges and being lazy. I didn’t do that. This was a calculated risk (somewhat unintentional because I did get caught up with too much work). I knew there would be no academic penalty if I blew the exam, all I would have to do would be to remediate. If my grade had been riding on this I would definitely have studied. So don’t get me wrong.

All I am saying is, have confidence in your abilities, and take calculated risks to see what you are capable of. You might just surprise yourself!