Nursing school in my experience was clinical, labs, lectures, an exam every other week and rounding the semester with a cumulative review. The thought of an exam with everything, everything from the past semester, is intimidating. The cumulative exam is as overwhelming as it is when looked at as a whole, but when you step back and look at the right parts, the intimidating parts seem to diminish.
The Bad. The number of questions increases.
The final exam in my school experience was twice as long as the bi-weekly ones. These exams held 100 items instead of the more customed 50. It was expected since all of the semesters was covered. The number of questions on a cumulative exam will be increased from the week to week exam scattered throughout your semester.
The Good. Questions are fewer per topic.
The number of topics jumps from five to nearly fifty depending on the subject during the semester. The beautiful part is a fewer question per topic. This becomes handy when you are answering these questions, and an entire disease process has slipped your mind. Each item doesn’t hold the same scoring as it did during the semester. Where forgetting everything during the semester could have brought down your exam grade by a whole letter grade this is now points in the bucket.
The end of the semester was a time of excitement, another semester done. Anxiety really would set in when studying for the final, the number of notes and lecture material on the list of topics alone. In the end, I got through it, and most everyone else does. Keep on task. Remember your priority. What had been your experience with the dreaded final exam?