The test

When Josh and I were dating (7 years ago) he was doing the pre-reqs for nursing school.

That one day when we got stranded on the side of the road we joked that I helped him study anatomy all day long. The the truth was I really did help him study anatomy. The boring kind. Out of the book.

Somewhere between then and now I stopped helping him study and limited my involvement with his school to laying on the sofa while he checked my blood pressure for fun. 

When he asked the nurse at the hospital if he could put in the catheter when we were having John, I emphatically informed him (and the nurse who was probably caught off guard by such a weird request) that "NO YOU CAN NOT!!!!!" 

So to say I've been supportive and helpful over the last few years is probably generous. But at one time I was more helpful than I was today. 

Still, when Josh graduated, nobody knew better than me how much he had put into this degree. The year of pre reqs. The waiting period after acceptance and the LATE nights studying, preparing and writing papers nearly did us both in. The missed events, the working all hours of every day and the constant worrying about what he was missing nearly cost Josh his sanity. If I had any semblance of sanity mine would have been at risk too. But let's be honest. Mine was long gone. 

So graduation was a sweet sweet day, but we could only celebrate so much when THE TEST was still looming over our heads. 

Josh studied his guts out. Took a prep course and answered what must have been a million practice questions. 

Wednesday was the big day. To say Josh was nervous would be a gross understatement. 

The way the NCLEX runs you have to take at least 75 questions, then depending on how you're doing they'll keep giving you questions of different difficulty to see if you pass or not. You have to get a certain percentage of questions a certain difficulty or higher correct to pass. 

You could take 75 questions and do really great and be done. 

Or you could take 75 questions and bomb them all and be done. 

Or if you're Josh you could answer every single one of the 265 questions. 

Using nearly every second of the 6 hours time limit. (5 hours, 59 minutes.) 

And if you're Josh you might leave with 100% confidence that you failed. Not just a little nervous about it, but completely 100% positive that you failed.

Because by the end of the test any question over 2 lines long wasn't even worth reading because he was so cross-eyed it wouldn't make sense anyway. 

So on Friday when a fellow student texted Josh congratulating him on passing he had a tiny meltdown. He learned that the State of Utah had given him a license number. But still wasn't sure about it because sometimes people just push paper without validating stuff. 

On Monday evening he got online to pay the fee to find out the results of the test early and as I was walking out the door to go swimming he told me that he passed. I screamed and jumped on him not like that, get your head out of the gutter and and miraculously the boys didn't wake up.

When I got home at 10pm we broke my #1 phone rule: Don't call people between 9 & 9 unless you're giving birth or dying and got on the phone texting and calling everyone we dared. 

And that's why at approximately 10:02 on Monday night cheers erupted all over the state of Utah.

And NOW it's finally over. No studying. No tests. No assignments. No labs. No care plans. No "just one more report". Just working. Just 40 (or 55) hours a week. And coming home to swim and nap and play and cook dinner and watch a show and RE.LAX.

So my dear friends. It's over. 

About dang time isn't it?