I (unofficially) passed

Today I took a practice test. I completed 150 questions in 1 hour and 31 minutes and scored a 74%. This is nothing to brag about, but within the passing range (70%). I am happy because I am still early in the studying process. I expect that I will see improvement in the next practice tests and of course with more studying. I found the questions pretty straight forward and several of them I knew right off the bat. There were 3 questions that I had not the foggiest clue and guessed. I was kind of surprised how many questions on pregnancy, and several repeat questions on the positive and probable signs of pregnancy. I expect that these questions (from the Leik book) were representative of the break down of questions on the actual boards, but who knows. I accomplished my goal of taking a full-length test and seeing where I am at- which is with a lot of work ahead of me. I also noticed that when I would miss questions, I tended to miss the next question, and sometimes a string of questions. This shows me that I need to work on staying calm and utilizing good test taking techniques. I will say that around question 75 I was starting to get antsy and feeling the painfulness of the test taking process. Not really what I would have liked to spend my day off doing, but it had to be done to get me out of my lull. In retrospect I feel like I could have done much better. But I feel like I will do better and definitely feel more grounded in the fact that I need to buckle down and study more than I have been. I also need to work on staying calm during the test and thinking critically through each question and not second guessing myself. The boards are more straight forward than the NCLEX which is good. I have a lot of confidence that I will pass, but at 74% today, I need to do better. Thank goodness I won't have to prove this tomorrow, but in the near future!