While I was taking the Proctored Pharmacology Assessment, I felt like it wasn’t working out in my favor. I felt really uneasy with a lot of my answer choices and crunched for time in a way. I think that the aspect of actually being in a public space combined with having a much shorter time limit might have been added stressors that weren’t beneficial to my test taking abilities. I remember during the assessment, every time someone finished and stood up to leave the room I got more nervous. I would think “how did they do that so fast, am I taking too long?” These kind of anxious behaviors were definitely not helpful in my test taking environment. My anxiety is reflected in my score. It is not a bad score, but it is not as good as my practice pharmacology assessments.

With that being said, I do feel that the practice assessments were a great study tool for an assessment in a proctored environment. They prepared me for the types of questions that would be asked and how to reason through them. I think what I learned the most from this proctored learning environment is that I need to calm down and find ways to cope with my anxiety during tests. The NCLEX will have the same type of feelings that were provoked in this assessment and probably more so. I would like to work more on coping strategies for this type of testing anxiety.