Good Pop-Up

If a person were to trust the PVT (PearsonVue Trick), the following pop-up is a very good sign that I successfully passed the NCLEX.

I felt very good about my performance when I walked out. Many do not have that "feel good" experience when they walk out - regardless of whether they passed or failed.

The exam shut off after 75 questions and it took me a little under two hours (including tutorial and end-survey). Out of curiosity, I did the PVT within an hour or so of finishing and got the good pop-up. I've heard that for some people it has taken several hours for the "good pop-up" to show up (they get a "results on hold" pop-up instead).

I will be able to get results from the Virginia Board of Nursing early next week. I'm planning to write a full update with thoughts, tips, and reflections from my NCLEX experience. But not tonight.  I have some other good news, but I'll make you wait on that.

Signed,
Joy Hancock, RN (unofficially)

The Sky's the Limit

Finally feeling a bit of nervousness. I am heading to bed shortly and I hope I'll be able to sleep restfully tonight. Probably will need an Ambien to help get me into la-la land.

It's kinda surreal that what I've worked long and hard for is now at my door. Finishing school and graduating was such a big deal, but reality is that I'm not a nurse until I'm licensed.  I can't do anything with my nursing education until I apply it to this exam. It's the same for medical students, law students, architects, engineers, etc... Lord willing, tomorrow I will become a legitimate professional nurse.

I've never been a career girl. Never aspired to climb that ladder. That has never been my dream. Still isn't. But reality is that I'm in my late 30's and no job I've ever held has had any potential for advancement (or advancement that I was interested in). There's a chance that I may never marry. There's a chance that it will be just me making plans for retirement, something I really have no interest in. I always figured that I'd marry a guy who'd have a clue about such things and I'd be off the hook for making those financial decisions. I'd contribute, if needed, but I totally didn't expect to be the one figuring out my financial future. Alas, reality has smacked me in the face and I've woken up to the fact that it is up to me. No one else (except maybe my dad) cares about my financial future. Despite my fervent denial of my situation, the years have passed quickly since my first college degree. I wish it hadn't taken me so long. I honestly thought I'd be married by 28, then it was 32, then 36. I'm grateful that I finally woke up and realized that I needed to make a change and grow-up and take control of my financial future. So I went to nursing school, graduated and I'm now preparing to start my career. But YET, I still do not think of myself as a career woman! It's not in my soul to climb the ladder for the means of achievement and status. For me, climbing the ladder is now a sort of financial necessity. And wonderfully, in nursing, the sky's the limit! And speaking of skies... I could even become a flight nurse and combine my love for flying and medicine!! 

Well, it's time to say goodnight. Big day tomorrow. And hopefully the next time I post...I'll have a few extra letters after my name!

You Know You Are Ready When...

You know you are ready to take the NCLEX when you go ahead and offer to sell your prep materials BEFORE attempting NCLEX!!

Almost There

With only one more day to study for NCLEX, I finally finished the Kaplan QTrainers. I didn't get as many QBank questions done as I had hoped. They recommend doing all the QTrainers (1-7, which I did) and about 90% of the QBank questions. I think there's around 1300 QBank questions and I've only done 750 of them. I will do more tomorrow.

Below are my scores for Kaplan:

Diagnostic 69% (mixture of questions- taken before Kaplan course)

Readiness 69% (only passing level questions- taken at the end of the Kaplan course)

The rest of these were completed AFTER the Kaplan Course (on my own)

Q Trainer 1 63%

Q Trainer 2 76%

Q Trainer 3 62%

Q Trainer 4 69%

Q Trainer 5 74%

Q Trainer 6 67% (only passing level questions)

Q Trainer 7 72% (only passing level questions)

QBank Cumulative Performance  Score: 70%  (750 questions so far)

I'm happy with my scores. My Kaplan instructors told us the following: 

"Goal for Question Trainers 1-5 is 65%. Goal for for QTrainers 6 & 7 and all QBank tests is 60%...aim for 65!"...

"Remember that every candidate taking the NCLEX®RN examination gets 50% of their questions correct and 50% of the questions wrong. The difference between passing and failing is level of difficulty of question. If you are getting 50% of your questions correct answering passing level questions, you will pass. Passing questions are written at the application/analysis level of Blooms Taxonomy."

 All throughout my studying, I've kept a positive "I can do this" attitude. And while I've certainly gotten tired of studying, I've never felt defeated. I feel that I've prepared well and will do well and will pass. This is not a test that I have to ace. It's pass/fail  and it's adaptive in that it's designed to keep pushing you to a higher and higher level of questions. It'll be a good thing if I get a lot of the SATA questions (Select All That Apply) because those are generally considered higher-level questions and means I'm doing well enough that I'm staying in the higher level question zone. It'll also be a good thing if I get questions on topics I've never heard of - because again, these questions are likely higher level. My Kaplan scores show that I'm doing better than 50% and that's good! Lots of people post their scores at AllNurses.com and from what I've seen, my scores are comparatively high. So I am very hopeful.

On Thursday I am not planning to do any studying (the day before the test), so that means that tomorrow is my last day of studying! Woohoo!  I've completed nearly 4,000 NCLEX questions since graduation and I fully expect to top 4,000 by tomorrow (only 80 to go!).

Tomorrow morning I have my second interview. I shadowed on Monday and LOVED the unit. The staff was great and I can totally see myself working there. It will be challenging, but in a fantastic way! I'm hoping to have good news to share...possibly next week. We'll see.

And to celebrate the end of my studying, I am planning to celebrate a friend's birthday tomorrow night. I MIGHT go to the movies on Thursday evening (to do something fun and chill out) before my big test. I really don't have money to spend on this...but hey-- I've studied my butt off and need a brain-break! And then hopefully NCLEX will go well on Friday and I'll be able to get back to town to go to another birthday party that night.

Then comes the long weekend of possibly not knowing if I've passed or failed. I'm REALLY hoping that I can try the PearsonVue trick on Friday evening or Saturday morning and get the "good pop up".  Otherwise it will be Monday or Tuesday before the Virginia Board of Nursing will acknowledge my results. I cannot imagine what it was like in the "old days" when you took the written board exam over the course of several days and official results took much longer than a few weeks to arrive. The was the case for my mom in the 1960's. Yeesh.

Better get to bed -- interview in the morning!

The Heat Is On

Four days, eighteen hours, twenty-four minutes... the heat is definitely on!

Today after church I drove down to Lynchburg to find the PearsonVue site and to scout a good spot to stop for lunch before NCLEX. It was a lovely drive and it was good to have some quiet time to think. My initial schedule will work great and I think I've built in enough time that even if I got a speeding ticket, I'd still be able to manage to get to the exam location on time (although I'll have to skip Panera and have to eat my pre-packed snack for my lunch). However, if my car breaks down, that will be a bit more challenging.


Note to self: locate numbers for Lynchburg taxi services!  (No surprise there... I'm a bit of a planner/control-freak).

Weather forecast is calling for 100 to 103 degrees on Friday- my NCLEX date!!!! Aaack! I HATE hot weather. I'm just not sure what to expect inside the testing site. Some places (buildings in general) are notoriously cold, some have HVAC systems that lag and have a hard time catching up to really hot or really cold days. I've read that it's suggested that you wear layers to NCLEX, that way you can be prepared for whatever the situation. However, my understanding is that if you remove a layer of clothing, you will be escorted out of the testing room by a proctor to your locker where you then have to be rescanned and so forth before going back into the testing room (same goes for bathroom breaks outside of unscheduled break times).  They won't let you hang your layers on the back of your chair. Also the clock on the exam does not stop if you take unscheduled breaks.

I'm very optimistic that I will do well on NCLEX. Hoping that I get the "good pop-up" at 75 questions...but I'm also trying to prepare myself for the worst--being that I have more than 75 questions, more than 100 questions, more than 200 questions. That's the joys of computer adaptive testing...the computer won't let you  stop until it's sure you meet the basic competency level... and hopefully you'll meet that competency level before question # 265 or six hours - whichever comes first.  If you don't know anything about NCLEX's computer adaptive testing... Kaplan has a FREE Strategy Seminar that they offer every couple weeks or so to explain how computer adaptive testing and NCLEX work together. Here's a link to where you can find these free events through Kaplan. I found this information very helpful AND very encouraging.

In addition to my continued NCLEX preparations, I am also shadowing (Monday) on the hospital unit where I want to work AND will be interviewing (Wednesday) there too. Gonna be a full, GREAT week! Here Goes!

You've got to be flexible!

Well so much for a trial run tomorrow to Lynchburg's PearsonVue site. Discovered Wednesday that my AC is not working. I haven't used it but maybe once for a few hours (a month or more ago), and now the outdoor unit fan is not coming on. Hopefully it's something small. Anywhoo, the repair tech is only available tomorrow afternoon...so if I want AC before Monday (and I do -- it's 80 degrees downstairs and 85 degrees upstairs!), I figure I'd better postpone my trial run. Thinking maybe I'll drive down on Sunday afternoon or early next week.  I have job interview on Wednesday, then I work all day on Thursday and then take NCLEX on Friday. Whew!!! I will be so relieved to have NCLEX behind me. Not sure what I will do with myself to not HAVE to be studying. And any "studying" I do will be related to my job and will be completely relevant to my patient population and related skills-- which is very motivational!


It's crazy to think that I've been out of school for almost six weeks!!!! Yay!

Another Countdown!

8 days, 13 hours, 33 minutes, 52 seconds until I sit for NCLEX!

Yesterday I reached my goal of 3,000 NCLEX-style questions. I still have a little over 1300 Kaplan questions left to do. And I'd still really like to do more prioritization/delegation/assignment questions via LaCharity's PDA workbook.

Since my test is a week from the day after tomorrow (Friday), I guess I should be heading to the Lynchburg site on Friday morning to do a dry-run. You know, drive there on same day of the week, same time of day to estimate drive time (r/t traffic) and of course actually FIND the location. Googlemaps says it'll take about an hour and forty minutes. Since my test is at 2 pm, and they suggest arriving by 1:30, I'm thinking I'll be eating lunch in Lynchburg, so I have to factor that in as well. I plan to sit down tomorrow and plan it out, so that I can do the dry-run on Friday.

The good news is that others from my nursing program have taken the NCLEX and passed. I'm expecting the same. I'm so ready to get this over with!

Nothing Much...

Been working (temp odd jobs: babysitting, companion care) the last couple weeks, trying keep my head above water- financially. It will be so nice to have a regular income again. I think I've decided that I will not turn the on air conditioning until I get a job. It's not been that bad yet, but still a long summer ahead, so hopefully I'll get the job/income thing figured out soon. Hey, I can always drag a mattress downstairs to sleep where it's cooler. On that front, I have a interview scheduled for a new grad position in great unit. This is a follow-up to the interview I had about a week and a half ago. Fingers-crossed.

Still on target for taking NCLEX end of June. And then, Lord willing, I will have my license...which makes me more legit when interviewing for jobs. I'm not worried about finding a job - but I am getting a bit nervous about my bank accounts. However, God has abundantly provided for my needs every step of the way these last two years of school, so I am confident He'll continue to provide what I need. And hopefully that's in the form of a job!

NCLEX Indecision

Yesterday evening I drove to Richmond to have dinner with my nursing school study partners who are taking the Kaplan Course live this week. On the way, I stopped by the NCLEX testing location (PearsonVue). It's nice to visit the location, make sure you can find it and estimate time (usually test runs are done at the same time of day and same day of the week as scheduled test).

My friend's experience with the live Kaplan course has been disappointing. Apparently the instructor just rushes through each question and starts eliminating answers using Decision Tree BEFORE the students have even gotten the chance to read the answers for themselves. Uh, hello? Obviously the teacher is very familiar with the questions (same for every course) and has forgotten that these students haven't seen these Q&A's before. Too bad. My friends said that they've gotten out of class early EVERY DAY (and were ahead of schedule) - which obviously points to the fact that the instructor is rushing through the questions. I feel so bad for them- sounds like a less than ideal experience and possibly a waste of money. My online instructor was really great about pacing our class and we never got out of class early.

Anywhoo, the title of this post alludes to my indecision over NCLEX. What is there to be indecisive about? Basically the when & where. Why? Well, last night one of my friends said she remembered hearing rumors that it was better to test in a location other than Richmond and that she's planning to test in Lynchburg. The reasoning? Something about someone (or multiple people) who failed more than once at Richmond, and ended up passing in another Virginia testing location. Well, I could see several scenarios where this could happen. 1) This person simply wasn't ready and therefore third time was a charm (regardless of location) and 2) this person simply needed a change of location to reduce anxiety and remain calm--thus improving her performance. So I'm not really sure what to think of this rumor.  Is this just one person's experience? Is it even feasible that there might be a glitch in the system that would make once testing center's experience more difficult than another? I have a hard time imagining that. Yet...I have rescheduled my exam...to the Lynchburg location. And because of the location switch, I had to move up my exam date. BUT that gave me a better testing time of 2pm rather than 8am. Which means I won't have to get up crazy early or get a hotel room. So now I can drive down late morning, grab lunch and then catch a snooze in my car before going into exam.

I didn't really want to test on a Friday (because it takes longer to get results from Board of Nursing website/phone), but I think because I used my driver's license (rather than SSN) when I registered with the BON, I probably won't get results the next morning anyways. I'm hoping that the PearsonVue trick will work for me (way to get unofficial results by trying to sign up to take the exam again; see allnurses.com), otherwise I'll just  have to wait until Monday or Tuesday of the following week to get my results. But whatever. Reality is that once the exam shuts down, there's nothing more you can do. Worrying about passing/not passing is not going to change anything.

But thankfully, I can still change my test date. However, the closer we get to the date, the fewer the options are for rescheduling. The good thing about moving up my exam is that it's done that much sooner! I've re-worked my calendar (and will have some Saturday studying to do), but it's still very doable!

It's a Process

Part one of the interview process went well this morning. I was impressed with how organized and informational it was and I'm still very hopeful to be invited to join their nursing team. I'm also impressed with their orientation process for new grads and what they offer. Next up includes shadowing and an interview with the nurse manager for the unit I'm interested in. We did discuss start date options and I chose second week in July. At this point I have gone ahead and scheduled my NCLEX exam for first week of July. Now to decide if I'm going to get up at 6am and drive to Richmond or if I'll just get a hotel (or maybe I know someone who will let me crash at their place overnight?). I can still reschedule my test up to 24 hours before hand...which is REALLY nice circumstances change.

So I guess this means NCLEX studying/review begins in earnest tonight!?!

My closest friends from nursing school are taking Kaplan (live) this week in Richmond. I'm thinking about driving down tomorrow night to join them for dinner. Will be good to catch up in person.

Interview!!

First RN interview tomorrow. I've been pretty chill up until now. I get a few butterflies when I think about it. Heading to bed shortly (with a sleep aid, of course), but first I'll lay out my clothes and spend a little time reviewing my interview notes which I wrote up a few weeks ago. And hopefully I'll sleep well and be rested so that I'm coherent and able to speak with clarity and purpose (no rambling!)

Of all the places and all the new grad RN positions available right now, this is where I want to work. And it's my first RN interview! No warm-up interviews for this girl. Hahaha! Actually, I'm hoping this will be the first of several interviews (for the same position).  I've got a number of questions, and I'm hoping that I'll have most or all of the answers after this (roughly) two hour interview.

Kaplan: Day Four

And it's over. I'm kinda relieved. I'm ready to get going on my studying for NCLEX. Haha! Not really, but I'm glad to have Kaplan behind me.

For the last session today (the first session was for independent taking of the Kaplan's Readiness Test) included a review of questions from the Readiness Test. Not all 180 questions but just the ones that students generally miss (not just our section, but Kaplan-wide). Helpful, but many of the questions I had gotten right. But there were a handful that I had gotten wrong and were surprised by the correct answer.

For the last half hour of class, our instructor talked to us about what we need to do going forward before taking our NCLEX exam. Completing all the Question Trainers (1-7), completing at least 90% of the QBank questions (total 1300), and aiming for a cumulative performance of 60% or higher on the QBank questions. Expectation is for us to review every question and rationale in every Trainer and after every QBank test. They suggest doing no more than 150 questions a day so that we really spend time reviewing every question and rationale and spend time looking up content that we don't know or understand.

My head is spinning. But I've broken it down and here is my initial plan with the materials provided by Kaplan:

At this point, I do not expect to study seventeen days straight. No way. My goal would be maybe five days a week. Kaplan suggests answering questions every day. Eh. There certainly will be days when I simply can't. Plus, who knows what's going to happen regarding work. If I get the job, then this schedule will have to be modified in a big way. I'll know more after Monday's interview as to their goal for hiring and orientation. But reality is that if I'm offered a job it will be at least two weeks before I'd start work because there are drug tests and background checks that have to get done. So if I can get at least ten full days of studying done before starting work, that would be awesome. Maybe I really should push myself to study every day and then if I do get the job, I'll still be able to take the NCLEX in early July.

And of course this schedule is just reflecting Kaplan resources and does not take into account my earlier expectation to use Saunders and LaCharity resources. Maybe I won't need to? I will continue taking flash cards to the gym (this has worked REALLY well with the cards put on rings) and of course I can apply Decision Tree to the flash card questions.

So the question is... when to start?

At this point I am glad that I did Kaplan's prep course. I'm glad I did the "Classroom Anywhere" format. A few bumps (see Kaplan: Day One post) but these were largely due to the fact that I was going through my school for Kaplan and my school did not adequately communicate with us. Can't blame Kaplan for that. The Kaplan instructors and staff were all very good and very helpful and managed the online aspect very well. The only downside was the chat window and dealing with people who don't follow instructions. But that's life, right? I guess the true test will be whether I pass NCLEX the first time or not. But then again maybe I would have done fine without Kaplan. I DID get a good score on the Diagnostic before I'd even taken Kaplan course. Well, we won't know now will we? 

Provision.

God is good people.

This morning I had plans to head over to campus to pick up a reference letter that I need for my job interview on Monday. At 11:45, I'm in the car and leaving my neighborhood and realize that due to it being close to the lunch hour, I should call the division office and ask if someone will be there to give me the letter that is waiting for me. But when I call, the automated message for the school says that they close at 11:30am on Fridays. aaaaah!  oh no! I try calling both admin assistants directly and just got their voice mails. So I know they are probably gone. I almost turned the car around and drove home. But I hoped that somehow, someway, someone would still be at the school to let me into the office to pick up my letter. I did NOT want to walk into the interview on Monday only having two out of the three letters.

I've had weeks to get these letters pulled together. But reality was that faculty was on vacation and busy starting the summer semester and I was not a priority. However, when I went to campus earlier this week (to pick up my Kaplan book), I ran into the faculty member who had not replied to my requests for a reference letter. She promised she'd do it on Thursday. So I made plans to pick it up on Friday (Kaplan prevented me from picking it up on Thursday). So here I am, in my car, realizing that I'd blown it and would have to pick up my reference letter on Monday after my interview. Sigh.  I hate excuses. I hate getting them and I hate giving them. And in my mind I was determined not to go into my interview passing blame onto my faculty member or stupid campus hours. I was willing to suck it up and look bad.

So I kept driving to campus. I get there and find there are still about three dozen cars sprinkled in the vast parking lots. I park my car and start walking toward the building when a girl calls out to me and says, "Do you know why the Main Building is locked?"  aaaah!!!  I tell her that I myself just learned that they close at 11:30 on Friday mornings. She's dejected and I'm less hopeful, realizing the science/nursing building is probably locked too. But with great hope (and desperation) I walk towards the nursing building. I put my hand on the door and am shocked when it gives. It's NOT locked! Hallelujah! One boundary crossed. A few more steps and I find the main office reception area locked. Shucks. I look through the glass wall and yes, I can see an envelope with my name sitting there. So close.

I head downstairs and find the door to the nursing faculty offices ajar- hoping that someone with a key or password can let me into the office upstairs where my envelope is (I even brought my ID with me to prove it belongs to me). I notice a guy sitting in the student lounge area downstairs, but head toward the faculty offices. No one. I head out the other end of the hallway and track back deciding I should see if that guy has seen any faculty or staff. He says he's not sure, but that there were two ladies that he saw upstairs walking towards the back of the building. I say thanks and rush upstairs. Sure enough the back door to the upstairs faculty office wing/area is open...and that's when I realize that there are TWO entrances to the main office. The main office is just in the middle of the upstairs faculty office area/wing. I can hear that someone is in one of the faculty offices (which is why the entry door is open), so I head into the office wing and head towards the reception desks. The lights are off (but light comes in through the glass wall) and I immediately have this moment of thinking "Wait, could I get in trouble for this?" Would someone think that I had broken in? Surely not- the door was open. So I quickly skirted the desks, grabbed my envelope with my name on it and booked it out of there. Whew!  With my letter in hand I head out the building saying "Thank you, Jesus, thank you, Jesus, thank you, Jesus!"

When I called the office this morning I was disappointed and discouraged. But my God is good and nudged me to keep driving to campus. It could have ended up all for naught, but it ended up okay! God provided. I have my letter. And I don't have to hang my head and apologize on Monday for only having two of the three letters.

Now I'm just hoping that what's written in this reference letter was worth all that stress. I have no idea what she wrote in the letter. My instructor sealed it and signed over the envelope closure. Her opinion is that the reference carries more weight that way. I'm hoping! =)

Okay, my last Kaplan session starts in 30 minutes... Here goes!