NCLEX in Viva! Las Vegas!

About two weeks before I graduated from school, a few of my classmates and myself were pulled into the Director of Nursing of the campus and were told that they would give us a scholarship that would reimburse us of our NCLEX registration fees if we were able to take, and pass, the NCLEX before the end of the year. Down to the meat of the story, the school's pass rates haven't been the greatest because a group of students in the previous two semesters cheated their way through school, passed all the classes with flying colors because instead of putting effort into studying, they put effort into buying the answers of the questions in the test bank from who-knows-what-website and so they went to take the NCLEX and failed, failed, failed. And rightly so. So when our semester comes up, they offered this scholarship to boost their quarterly pass rates. They bought us off and I was perfectly fine with that. $300 is $300 is $300.

Catch is, when you first register, they only show test dates that are available, cancellations excluded, so the first date was January 3 - after the end of the year.

BUT!! After you have a date to your profile, you are able to go in and look at cancellations. And so the rat race began. I found a date in Boise on Dec 28, and after checking it every hour, on the hour, for a few days, we found a date on Dec 28 in Las Vegas. Andt hen we continued to check it every hour, on the hour, to see if one opened up so I could go down with one of my friends from school. And it did, fifteen minutes after my scheduled time, and I found it at 11:00 PM. And so began my massive amounts of calls, texts and messages on Facebook so she could reschedule her time and go down with me.
I went down the day before, met up with my friend and her mom (which was also one of my teachers in school), ate dinner and then went out to see the Strip because Thomas and I were Vegas Virgins. We went to Treasure Island, went to a country bar, (gambled a little), and then hit the sack for the night because tomorrow was the big day. We ended wandering down the strip to Denny's for breakfast and lo and behold, we were only a mere block from the testing center, so we killed some time going to dinky shops until the time was here for me to go up.

I took the test, and I had heard a few things about how the NCLEX went for a few others that took it earlier in the day, and knowing that my classmates would want to know the details, I kept tally marks of the dreaded "Select All That Apply" (22 of my 75, by the way) and watched how long it took me to answer the ______ amount of questions I had before it was determined that I would fail or pass the NCLEX.

For those that don't know how the NCLEX works, you can get anywhere between 75 and 265 questions and it automatically shuts off when the computer adaptive test can easily predict whether or not you will get the next question right or wrong based off of your previous answers. Then it looks at the types of questions that you are getting correct, whether they are knowledge-based (easy) questions or critical thinking (hard) questions. If it is predicted you will get the next question wrong, you fail, the hard questions right, you pass, if you get the easy questions right, you fail, because RN's need to know how to critically think, not just recall knowledge based questions.

Well, mine shut off at 75 questions and I have never been more unsure of something in my life. Based off my school experience, I should have taken comfort in the fact that I did well in school, but honestly, I felt like vomiting and crawling into the fetal position because I was so unsure of how I did.

Good thing the Department of Professional Licensing of Utah is fast because before I knew it, I could look online on the DOPL website to see that I was an RN with an active license!

YIPPEE!!!!

The next day we went home, and so began my constant application of jobs - at least 3 a day, with the almost always immediate email saying that I am underqualified due to lack of experience.

One must ask, how does one gain said experience if NO ONE WILL HIRE BECAUSE I HAVE NO EXPERIENCE?!

In due time.. in due time..