My guess is that you aren’t feeling so much jubilation but more trepidation at this moment. Despite the stress and worry that test season brings, this is an exciting time for you and your colleagues. The Veterinary Licensing Exam! You are going to be practicing veterinarians in a few short months. A lifetime of dreaming is about to come true and there are just 7 1/2 hours of staring at a computer screen separating you from your career goal. You have spent months preparing and you can do it. You can totally pass this test!
In honor of you big life event occurring sometime over the next month I would like to impart some wisdom that I wish someone had told me prior to test day.
1) Just about everyone leaves the test feeling like they have failed. It is such an important exam and the stress of needing to do well tends to mess with a person’s confidence. Just know that almost everyone thinks they have failed but that 99% of VetPrep users will pass. The odds are in your favor.
2) And on that note, good students do somethings fail. It's not ideal but it is going to be ok. Sometimes it really is just a bad day, nerves get in the way, you have the flu or you may need to study harder. The NAVLE gives you multiple opportunities to retake the test so if for some reason it doesn't work out the first time, know that there is hope.
3) The test kind of flies by. Even though the length of the exam can be grueling, for many students test day passes very quickly. Before you know it you are on your 6th block of 60 questions and you can't believe the day is almost over. Being that focused for so many hours warps the time.
4) If you took your test through a different state than the majority of your classmates, then there may be a delay in receiving your test results. This happened to a friend of mine in vet school. She knew she was going back to Connecticut and took her boards through CT, then everyone in North Carolina got their test results back 2 days prior to her. I think it was the longest 2 days of her life.
5) You might actually miss studying for boards. Granted, you won't miss the stress or using up all your free time to study, but you might miss all of the practice tests. For many students reaching for their phone and answering questions becomes second nature, so you might have to find a new hobby, like tetris or job hunting. Speaking of job hunting...
“They” don’t know how challenging vet school can be.
But you are in the middle of it and you know that it is very difficult; lots of late nights studying, worrying about your patients, mountains of debt, a giant board exam to pass prior to graduation and then, oh yeah, I guess you should think about getting a job too.
We put together a list of what you should be considering when looking for that DREAM JOB: