Graduation was quite honestly one of the best nights of my life, it's even up there with the day I got married....seriously, those two days are neck and neck at the top. If you've graduated from anesthesia school, you know what I mean!
UTC Anesthesia Class of 2011!
And oh, did we celebrate!
And then what?! Well, going from getting up at the crack of dawn every morning and spending 50 + hours in the OR every week to sitting at home studying was definitely an adjustment. But wow, did the house stay clean. I'm talking eat your dinner off the bathroom floor clean...OK I might not take it that far with a man living in the house.
I studied for 6 weeks. Now, I am not going to blow rainbows up anyone's behind and say I studied for 8 hours a day, everyday and even on the weekends. There's just no way. If you can study like that, more power to ya! I studied on average 4-5 hours a day, MAX. And for the first four weeks, none on the weekends. I went through Valley (which I highly recommend!) in the first four weeks and then studied the stuff I had trouble with for the last two weeks. I also focused most of my time in Memory Master from Valley in the last two weeks. I didn't purchase Prodigy but I did spend a little time in Core Concepts taking the practice exams.
I took my boards on Thursday September 22 at noon. I'm not usually a nervous test-taker but this was no ordinary test. I went to bed early the night before and tossed and turned all night. After siging over the naming rights to my first-born child to the NBCRNA, I was allowed to enter the testing room. I spent 5-10 minutes (I think I got sucked into a black time hole for some of that) staring at the screen before entering my answer for the 100th question. Then, BOOM. I was done. (Some of you may not know that the minumum number of questions on the certification exam is 100 and the max is 170....you can get any number of questions in between, but once the computer determines that you have passed or failed, it shuts down the test)
And then, the survey....really?
"How friendly was the staff at the testing center...blah blah blah" Ummm, couldn't we do this some other time? I have a lot riding on these results. Survey complete, I step out into the waiting room and the "all-knowing results-holding" guy says, "Wait, I need to print this on different paper". Cue panic attack. Slowly lower self to chair before passing out.
"This is torture, you know" I said to Mr. all-knowing, results-holding guy. "What?" He replied, "You don't know?" and hands me my results....
PASS
Oh Holy mother of God! I don't care what sort of fancy paper you want to print it on...this is good enough for me.
So, I managed to keep myself semi-composed while Mr. Letmeprintthisonfancypaper guy did his thing and handed me my results all official like. I RAN out to my car and pumped up the jam all the way home. Wow. I still get excited thinking about that day. And....I think it's now in the running for best day ever, right up there with graduation and getting married.
Daniel and I left that next day and headed to Orlando, FL to stay with his dad for two nights before making the drive to Miami on Sunday for a 7 day cruise through the Caribbean. We visited Half Moon Cay, Bahamas; St. Thomas in the USVI; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Grand Turk. It was FABulous! I even got some of my tan back :)
Now it is time to wait on the AL BON to process paperwork and send my license in the mail. Let the waiting begin :)
