This morning has felt like a graded exercise test. 🥴 We took our 3rd exam for Fundamentals, and our dosage safety exam.

You may or may not have heard that dosage safety in nursing is kind of a big deal. 😬 I mean, medical errors have long been the third leading cause of death, and a considerable portion of those are due to medication errors. 🤯 It’s crucial for nurses to understand how to safely and effectively calculate dosages, because people’s lives literally depend on it. 😳 Which is why, as student nurses, we are given 2 attempts to make at least a 90% on our dosage safety exams, or we must repeat the entire course! 😱 {No pressure.} 😰

Math and I have never really been friends. 😕 We’re more like very distant relatives who awkwardly nod to one another at the family reunion, while one of us pretends to have an urgent phone call. 🤣 I have nothing against math per se. It’s just not a skill I typically use outside of money management. 🤑 And it’s not something I’ve ever felt really comfortable or confident with. 🤐

Subsequently, I knew I would need to practice as much as possible. And I did! For weeks, I’ve been practicing every chance I got, plus studying the material for the regular exam. 🤓 When I walked in this morning, I 👏🏻 was 👏🏻 ready. 👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻

Until, I wasn’t. 🤪 Remember in the movie “A Christmas Story,” when Ralphie knew exactly what he wanted to say to Santa, until he climbed up on his lap? That was me. 😰 My mind went blank. 😳 It was like I had never encountered any of the information on this exam before in my life. My pulse quickened, my face felt flush, I could feel acid bubbling in my stomach and throat. 🤢 I had visions of being thrown out of nursing school, my family, friends, and colleagues disowning me. 😵

I pushed through and answered to the best of my ability, but somehow all and none of the answers seemed correct. 😶 I finished and my fears were realized… I scored a 73 on my main exam and a 75 on dosage safety. I felt like a failure and a fraud. I had robbed a more deserving student of acceptance into the limited access nursing program, and I did not deserve to be here. 😔

But just when I was feeling the lowest of lows, I saw an announcement from our instructor. There were glitches with the tests and she needed to manually assess them. 🤔 It was a tiny glimmer of hope. But I was pretty convinced that, if anything, she would only discover my scores were actually much lower than originally calculated.😖

All those familiar feelings of self-doubt and imposter syndrome came flooding back. How could I ever hope to become a nurse if I’m barely passing the first semester? I went home to pout, feel sorry for myself, and do some deep soul searching. 🥺

My pity party was interrupted by a good friend messaging me that grades had been adjusted. So, I reluctantly logged in to see the damage. 🙈

🥳🥳🥳🥳

I’m not a fraud or a failure. 🙌🏻 I made an 83 on my main exam and a 95 on my dosage safety exam! 🤩 I have what it takes to accomplish my goal: to be a safe and competent nurse. 👩🏻‍⚕️