NCLEX..waiting for my train to come in...

Nothing can prepare a nurse graduate for Boards and how you feel after you take them. In my mind, I envisioned hours of testing,thinking about the nurses who took paper pencil tests on every aspect of nursing from neonatal to geriatrics.

My boards were over before they began. I had taken a Kaplan prep course to practice questions and brush up on content I might have missed in school. I did everything Kaplan required and then got utterly tired of doing questions. I simply couldn't do another Q-Bank. I stopped the day before to rest and ended up getting a pedicure and massage. I went to bed early, thanks to Melatonin...and woke with the roosters.

Packing a bag of snacks, eating breakfast, two cups of coffee, listening to happy tunes, saying my prayers. Checking in. All these things I imagined. Then I took a couple deep breaths, put in my ear plugs and began.

Question 1...nothing looked familiar. Question 2....I don't know and so on..This went on for 80 questions and then the CAT screen went to black. What the hell? What just happened? Did I answer those correctly or did I just throw three years of schooling down the toilet?

I don't know...it felt awful. It was surreal. Two other classmates where there taking at the same time and they experienced the same reaction. How can this test that I just took in 2.5 hours determine if I am competent to be a nurse?

This is day 4 of my wait. I don't know what is next. I have 45 days to retest. If I didn't pass, I wouldn't even know where to go to resume studying. Is this the last bit of torture, or is just the nature of nursing..to always be exhausted, psychologically tested and wondering where you stand.

In the meantime, I am standing on the platform, waiting for my train to come in.