I started work maybe a month after graduation and was registered to take boards a month after that. I had made a nice little schedule to study for about six weeks for boards. We had a general review course before graduation, which helped to outline how and what to study (and it was helpful, thanks, Vince), but didn’t make boards feel any less daunting. I found myself anxious, and started having difficulty sleeping and breathing appropriately (this constant tightness in my chest). Runs were becoming challenging (i.e. they weren’t very stress-relieving…some days yes, but other days, no) and I felt like my life was on hold while I studied for this exam. I was in this still new city (to me), but I basically put the kabosh on fun things (maybeee one fun/touristy thing a weekend) until after boards (and especially after I passed boards).
I kept telling myself that this test doesn’t define me – I am still a competent person – I know a select few people who failed and I still consider them smart people – I am calm in stressful situations – I usually work myself up over little things – etc. etc. But it still felt like a daunting task. I was worried about choking – something I felt has happened to me, in college, mostly. And also since I feel like I don’t always do the best that I can on standardized tests (remember: you are always your own worst critic).
My routine became work, run/exercise, study, find a new library, study some more. (I’ll save starting a new job in the midst of all of this for a new post.) It became a game to try and find new libraries that I liked. I treated myself to one coffee over the weekend (I’m not normally a coffee drinker…too much caffeine gets me weird and I just don’t overall like the idea of becoming dependent on it, though I am slowly learning to like the taste of some coffees), would bring my dry erase board, computer, note cards, and books, and camp out in the library for a few hours. I found that I did better if I left the house and if I didn’t stay in one place too long. Although I had a study schedule, I had written it intending to go through all of the information at least three times. So if something happened that I needed to shift, it was possible (and I also was just trying to study differently than how I did for my comprehensive exam).
I used all of those different study methods, as well as practice tests/questions, talking out loud, watching videos, rewriting my notes, etc. I literally wasn’t sure what else I could do differently if I failed. The days leading up to boards were a daze…I felt like I was basically done with studying (like c’mon already, let’s take the damn thing), but also pretty anxious about the whole experience. My three years of school were coming down to this. What if I’m the only one in my class to fail? What will my professors think? My parents? I’ll have to quit my job. Blah blah. I had these thoughts more at the beginning of my studying, but as I got toward the end of my six weeks of studying, these questions didn’t matter. I would figure those out if they happened. All I needed to focus on was taking this test. For me. For no one else. For me.
The day of the exam arrived (barely slept) and I drove to the testing center still in that daze. There were some students from George Fox’s PT program as well as some medical students taking their exam (theirs was freakin’ 9 hours long). I made some terrible nervous jokes about coming all the way out here to take boards/vacation gone wrong, and then before I knew it they were calling us in.
Boards is 250 questions broken up into 5 sections of 50. You get 5 hours to take the whole thing and the board releases two exams (for the low low price of 90$) that look exactly like the real thing (that I had taken), so I wasn’t surprised by the format. 50 questions aren’t scored, but you don’t know which ones they are (yay, research).
Going through each section (and you get a 15-minute break after the second section), I felt terrible. I think I felt like the 1st and 3rd? 4th? Sections were my worst, but I honestly didn’t feel good about any of them. Which was probably the worst feeling. I walked out of there, in a daze, went home, ate, went running, then cried, thinking that I had failed. This is apparently a common feeling. Oy. But it didn’t suck any less.
Waiting game is about a week for the P/F result. During that week I didn’t feel like I could truly relax because I didn’t know if I should re-start studying or if I should register for the next exam time or what. It was nice not to have to study during the evenings and on that weekend, but then it’s like, what can I do with that nervous energy, then?? A week later I started to get texts from classmates that they were finding out their results (all passing) and that meant I could probably check. I was at work, and I was nervous to check at work because if I failed that meant that I literally had to stop working right then and there, which would have been a total mess. However, I was getting more and more anxious about it, so I bit the bullet and checked on my lunch break.
I PASSED. It didn’t feel real. I proceeded to ugly cry then call all of my immediate family. Such a serene, surreal feeling. That still feels great even almost four weeks later. (I’ll probably still ride this high for months.)
Okay this turned into something longer than I thought it would. But now we’re beyond boards! A life that I didn’t know existed and was honestly not something I had thought about, which made these weeks after fun and uncomfortable. But hey, I’m a professional now! (Or at least that’s what my license says…)