last exam... EVER!

hehe

one of the benefits of LD branch nursing at Caley is that after sem B of 1st year, there are NO MORE EXAMS!

sem C we have 1 written assignment and in years 2 and 3 it's all essays and assignments :)

So... i was staying at my friends, Mary's, last night - I went over there yesterday morning so we could do some revision together.

I was in a bad way.

I was panicking, big style!

when I panic, I usually silently internally panic - I just glaze over, stare off into the distance and my brain goes completely blank.

my confidence had really been knocked by getting a mark on my essay significantly lower than I had anticipated, and I really got it into my head that althought I thought I knew what I was doing, I really didnt, so was sure to fail the exam.

everyone kept saying to me about PMA, that those who envision success are more likely to attain it... and I just wanted to cry and shout at them that they had no idea how much stuff we had to try to remember!

to top it off, I had to miss Zumba, which REALLY got me down, I so could have done with a Zumba buzz last night. sounds as if I missed a really good class :(

looking at the past papers was totally freaking me out, but when Mary was just simply reading out the qs, I was managing a lot better - so eventually, after hours and hours, I finally began to come around to the idea that maybe I did know something.

I didn't sleep all that great last night, so I woke this morning tired and sore.

off we went for our exam, loads of people were doing last second cramming, but I've never been one for that - it just reminds me of what I don't know and freaks me out even more!

the paper consisted of 30 multiple choice... something like 11 fill-in-the-blanks and 4 from a choice of 10 short notes.

the multiple choice I got through pretty easily, I lucked out on quite a lot, that they happened to be unusual things I'd noticed when revising, there was only about 2 I really was unsure about but had educated guesses on, but generally finished that part really quite happy with my answers.

fill-in-the-blanks, again, went pretty smoothly, a couple I just had zero idea about so just put down anything, but I'm pretty confident I got at least half right.

short notes went... OK - not great, but I put down what i could remember for my chosen topics and left it at that, even if I just get 2 or 3 marks from each (worth 10 each) then I should have passed the exam relatively well - though I'm not building my hopes up that I've done spectacularly or anything, as long as I get 35% I'll be happy, well- I wont, but I'll be happy to have passed to module and not have to do a resit!

afterwards was the usual "ooh what did you put for XYZ?!" I never take part in that, it's not productive in the slightest.

so all in all i came out the exam feeling a HELL of a lot better than when i went in! a couple of days ago I actually thought I would break down into tears in the exam, so I was pleasantly surprised to find I coped quite well! I actually finished the exam with 40 minutes to spare (it wass a 2hr exam), but to be fair, some people started leaving as soon as the mandatory first 40mins had passed!

the general consensus on FB afterwards was that it was no-where near as bad as anticipated, and most of those who went in sure they'd fail came out reasonably confident of a pass.

we've got our next placements through, finally, we only start next tuesday! - I'm at the southern general hospital on the physical disability rehab unit, should be interesting!

and now... I'm shattered - I'm gonna be really rock'n'roll tonight and have a wee glass of wine then head for bed early, Caelan's got his class assmebly at 9:10 tomorrow morning... then I've got a productive day of getting Lyna's top finished planned :)

and then of course, Zumba on friday! I am SO gonna enjoy it! :)

it feels so good being able to smile again :)