Wednesday, November 4, 2009

I write my exam tomorrow

This is a boring week, I write my NCLEX exam tomorrow. I sure hope I pass it! I've heard that less than 40% of foreign-educated nurses pass on the first try (and actually, I think a high number of American-trained candidates fail on the first go too, but not nearly as many). I'm hoping the fact that English is my first language will help, some of the high failure rate has to be a language barrier for those not from English-speaking countries, I would think.

I'm pretty optimistic, but you just never know with these things. It's a computer-generated exam, so it's designed to find your area of weakness and then torture you with it. I know my area of weakness, it's medications, but it's also not an area I find I can realistically do too much to improve on. If you don't use a drug commonly in your workplace, then it's kind of hard to pull it out of the tangle of similarly-yet-strangely named unfamiliar drugs, with seemingly-random side effects, potential interactions, therapeutic serum levels, etc. I could spend a year studying and probably still not pull them out of my memory reliably. I hope the exam sticks to the basic ones, I have heard that it mostly does, and if it does then I should be OK.

Once the exam is done, then I set myself loose on L.A. to start doing museums, hikes, more biking, local attractions, and whatever else I can find! Oh, and job-hunting and bureaucrat-wrangling too. We'll see how it all works out.

4 comments:

  1. "it's designed to find your area of weakness and then torture you with it" LOL, so that's how those computerized exams work! From my recent experience with the GRE it's impossible to tell how well you're doing because if you do well, the questions get tougher.

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  2. Good luck, Nancy!! Hope all goes well.

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  3. Hi Nancy! Was nice to speak with you tonight. I'll be sending you good vibes for your success tomorrow. I am convinced you'll do fine. You are a bright woman! -Eric

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  4. Using a computer to generate exam questions seems like a very non-benevolent use of technology. Whatever happened to good old multiple choice exams! Anyway, good luck and at least the boring studying is over...

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