Kaplan: Day Two

So.... Class started at noon. Power went out at 12:30. hahahaha! Um, so what do you do? Well, after waiting a few minutes to see if the power might come back on, I called and reported the outage. Then I changed my clothes into something more presentable, all the while hoping that the power would come back on. I called a friend 2 miles away to see if his power was out (if not, I'd have run over there to use his internet), but his power was out too. So I shut down my computer, threw it in the car with a pair of headphones and headed to Panera (nearest free wifi). I texted that same friend and asked if he'd text me when the power came back on. I rushed into Panera (it's 1pm at this point) and find an empty table with a accessible outlet. I boot up my computer and then head over to the counter to order a drink. I head back to my table, pull out my headphones and log-in to the site. The audio is horribly choppy- I call it bit-mapped audio (again, Kaplan warned us about wireless being less than ideal). *SIGH* Then I get a text from my friend saying power is back on...it's 1:10 or so. The Panera connection is lousy and my power is back on...so I pack up my stuff and headed back home.  I had to laugh. That's all I could do. The *only* thing I could've done differently was to wait at the house and *hope* the power would come on soon. But, this is me we are talking about...I made a plan and stuck with it...but then reversed course when the plan failed. Thankfully Panera is less than 15 minutes from the house, so I was home and logged back in by 1:30... exactly an hour after losing connectivity.

Sure, I missed an hour. But what did I miss? Oh, about 12 NCLEX questions. And rumor has it that I can go back onto Kaplan's course site and find those questions and walk through them myself! Kaplan recognizes that life happens sometimes, so they have really done a good job duplicating resources so that we can get them one way or another.  I forgot to mention that yesterday, my online instructor lost video feed several times and had to reboot and reconnect. Apparently there were having pretty bad storms and tornadoes in her area. Thankfully the TA's are in a different location and were able to jump in and take care of the class details. I think we lost our main instructor for the last 30-45 minutes of the class - she just wasn't able to reconnect. But the TA's who are also Kaplan instructors were able to keep us going and getting us done on time.

Today I didn't do anything productive while watching/ listening to the class. I let the clothes sit in the washer (why???) and never pulled out any hand weights. I did get sleepy, but instead just got up and just got some cold water and sat back down. The class was was pretty much the same as yesterday. Six hours of answering question after question using the Decision Tree. There are definitely tips I'm learning - like questions to ask myself while going through the possible answers, but when I get a question wrong...it's because I don't know or can't remember the related content to justify that answer. I'm a pretty good tester in general and I surprise myself at times at how well I can guess, but sometimes I'm at a complete loss. I do think that having these isolated questions on a given topic, can somewhat help me with recall later for specific content areas--seeing as I've had to apply information or learn information after getting a question wrong.

I'll definitely need to do a fair amount of content review before taking the NCLEX. Kaplan's course site is going to help...but I'm a bit overwhelmed at all that I need to do before testing. Kaplan does provide several study plan schedules which can help. I think I'm still in a bit of denial that I really need to sit down and be ultra disciplined about studying for NCLEX. I suppose it doesn't help that I haven't selected a date to test yet, but I'm waiting until after my interview and until after I know what is going to happen with that job. I definitely plan to start studying for NCLEX in earnest next week, regardless of job, but having a test date will definitely drive the studying and give me a goal.

I should've posted the course schedule yesterday, but here it is:

Tuesday, Session 1: Orientation/Class Start/Decision Tree

Tuesday, Session 2: Pharmacology/Reduction of Risk

Wednesday, Session 3: Reduction of Risk/Physiological Adaptation

Wednesday, Session 4: Physiological Adaptation/Basic Care & Comfort/Mgmt of Care

Thursday, Session 5: Management of Care/Safety and Infection Control

Thursday, Session 6: Safety and Infection Control/HMP/Psychosocial

Friday, Session 7: Readiness Test (taken online at home during class time)

Friday, Session 8: Review of the Readiness Test/Roadmap for Future Study

Tomorrow I have Sessions 5 & 6.

Until then...