My "Story"

Preparing:

Is not really that exciting. I have been doing NCLEX questions from some source or another since before the start of my RN year. However, for real I used HESI-RN for content review. I browsed through it. As in I just read the HESI HINTS, since I scored an 1147 on the HESI exit, I assumed it was enough. I just really could not get into content review. I mean after all of the studying that I did while in school, I really could not even force myself to do content review, my heart was just not in it. My school offered a 3 day class for free, but I didn't go to it. Who wants to go to more lectures on nursing content after Pinning? LOL... Kaplan had content review lessons on it, but every time I put them on, I'd fall asleep, no really I actually did, EVERY TIME. BORING! (BTW, if you want interesting Kaplan review, like for Cardiology, look up Conrad Fischer,MD on youtube.com loved him. Got me an A in that section too.)

So I did NCLEX questions every day from the day I got my ATT until the day before my NCLEX testing date. I used Kaplan-all the trainers and the QBank. I reviewed the Decision Tree they claim is a fool proof way, and after a few days of thinking it worked, well it didn't. I just answered questions the way I always did. My scores:
Diagnostic 77.78%
Qt 1 66.67%
Qt 2 77.33%
Qt 3 63%
Qt 4 70.67%
Qt 5 68.67%
Qt 6 67.5%
Qt 7 67.55%
Readiness (taken out of order ) 68.33%
QBank 50% Completed with 66%

Apparently these are good scores according to Kaplan. I did 150 questions a day + 1 test.

When I was bored, I did questions from PrepU, but they were really easy, even the higher level ones which say they are designed to get harder the higher your level, but when I was getting 95-100% on each set of questions, well I knew I wasn't being challenged correctly. So I thought yeah let's try the makers of THE test. So I bought a 5 week NCSBN program for $50 and well after about 4 quiz sets, HATED it! So only about 300 questions completed and I went back to Kaplan.

For lab values I google searched out "nursing lab value quizzes" and just did all the ones I could find.

There was also this "study guide" circulating around Allnurses.com I spent 1 whole day arranging that thing into a Type A Personality approved completely ordered by system, properly arranged study guide. I had to read and re-read it a few times to get it all categorized, so the things stuck I guess. It's pretty much just "gems", the sad part only 1 of those "gems" was on my test. (HINT: K)

NCLEX- So anyway, I was pretty burned out by day 26 and just did about 25 or so questions that whole day. On day 27 I did about 40 or so questions in 10 question sets. Sidebar: 10 question sets are about all I have the regular attention span for. Day 29, I went to the movies the night before, went to bed around midnight, got up the next morning@0630 for my 8am test time. Then I went to take the test. Pretty much straight forward, the TSA has got nothing on these folks. But overall, since I had been through it before, it was not as nerve wracking as it was the first time when I had taken the NCLEX-PN.

Despite studying when I answered the questions on NCLEX-RN I felt like I was guessing at every single one. You just can never gauge how that test goes because it is probably designed to make you fell like you failed it.

I drove home... the rest you know :-)

So that is pretty much it. I spent the entire night after the test searching everywhere for clues and reassurances that I had in fact passed. I checked the BON website about a million times, but when I got home at 0830 from work I was just too damn tired to stay up. Exhaustion set it and I fell into a restful sleep. I was awoken by my IM notifications from Facebook pinging all over the place (my cell phone notifies me if there is one). Since it kept going off and the dogs were barking I got up, it was 1230. I logged into the BON website and well... :-) Happy Dance!

This is a supper surreal feeling.