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!