Review Days Adventure | Part II: Faith, Examination Fears, and a Pilgrimage Before the Nursing Board Exam

My mother has always possessed an extraordinary ability to turn an ordinary conversation into a moral lesson, usually at the precise moment when I would have preferred to remain comfortably ignorant. Like many Filipino mothers, she could deliver an entire sermon without the assistance of a pulpit, a microphone, or even a particularly willing audience. All she needed was one daughter attempting to negotiate her way out of attending church. Unfortunately for me, I happened to be that daughter.

I remember one occasion when I did not feel like going to Mass. I cannot recall my exact excuse, although I suspect it was something terribly convincing at the time, such as being tired, feeling lazy, or having an urgent appointment with my bed. My mother, unimpressed by whatever defence I had prepared, simply reminded me, “You can’t go anywhere if you don’t know how to sacrifice even just one hour for God.”

There it was. One sentence, delivered with the authority of a woman who had already anticipated every possible argument I might offer.

I probably did what most young people do when presented with an inconvenient piece of parental wisdom. I listened, perhaps reluctantly, and privately questioned why attending church had suddenly become a matter of my entire future. One hour seemed like a rather small thing until it was an hour I wanted to spend doing something else. At that age, I was particularly skilled at calculating how much time I needed for myself and considerably less enthusiastic about examining how much of it I was willing to give to God.

My mother, of course, had a different understanding of priorities.

It would take the approaching Nursing Licensure Examination to make me reconsider her words.

By December 2011, I had reached the stage of my nursing journey when textbooks seemed to multiply overnight and every conversation eventually returned to the same subject: the board examination. Four years of nursing school had brought us to this point, and the December 18–19 examination was beginning to feel less like an academic requirement and more like an appointment with destiny.

We were already immersed in our in-house review at Talavera House of Prayer, organised through the University of San Jose–Recoletos and our review centre, PRN-Cebu. Our days revolved around lectures, practice questions, revisions, and the ongoing attempt to persuade our brains to retain information from practically every major nursing subject we had studied.

Medical-Surgical Nursing, Maternal and Child Nursing, Community Health Nursing, Psychiatric Nursing, Fundamentals of Nursing—every topic seemed perfectly reasonable when studied individually. Put them together in preparation for one national examination, however, and suddenly the human brain began to resemble an overcrowded filing cabinet whose drawers refused to close.

I had studied for years, but there were still questions I could not answer.

In fact, there were quite a lot of them.

I remember making mistakes during our review sessions and feeling that familiar mixture of embarrassment and frustration whenever the correct answer turned out to be something I should have known. There is a particularly unpleasant sensation associated with confidently choosing option B, only to discover that the answer is C and that the rationale makes such perfect sense that you begin questioning whether you had been present during your own education.

Sometimes I laughed at myself. Sometimes I worried. Occasionally, I wondered whether the examination writers had developed a personal interest in testing the limits of my patience.

Poor me. Hahaha!

But beneath the humour was a very genuine fear.

I wanted to pass. I wanted to become a Registered Nurse. I wanted to make my family proud and prove that the years spent studying, completing clinical requirements, and enduring difficult days had led towards something meaningful. I knew how much had gone into reaching that point, and the thought of falling short frightened me more than I liked to admit.

There were moments when I felt prepared, followed almost immediately by another practice examination that suggested otherwise. Confidence could be a remarkably temporary visitor during our review days. One good score would convince me that I was finally getting somewhere. One difficult set of questions would have me mentally reviewing every mistake I had made since first-year nursing school.

That was when prayer became more than a familiar childhood routine.

I began to understand what my mother had been trying to teach me. Her words were not simply about spending sixty minutes inside a church building. They were about learning to make room for God even when life was busy, inconvenient, or uncertain. Especially then.

I had always known how to ask God for help. Like many people, I became exceptionally articulate in prayer whenever an examination was approaching. There is something about academic pressure that can transform even the most distracted student into a remarkably devoted conversationalist with heaven.

But during those review days, I began to think more carefully about what I was asking.

Of course, I prayed to pass the board examination. I would be pretending otherwise if I claimed that my prayers were entirely free from academic ambition. I wanted the licence, the professional title, and the opportunity to begin the nursing career I had worked towards for so long.

Yet I was beginning to realise that prayer was not a substitute for preparation.

I could not reasonably expect God to answer an examination on my behalf while I neglected my reviewers. Faith did not absolve me of the responsibility to study, understand the material, or correct my mistakes. If anything, believing that I had been given an opportunity to pursue nursing made me more conscious of the effort I owed to that opportunity.

So I prayed, and then I studied.

When I answered incorrectly, I went back to the rationale. When I found a topic difficult, I tried to understand it. When anxiety interrupted my concentration, I prayed for enough composure to continue. It was hardly a glamorous routine. There were no extraordinary revelations, no sudden ability to remember entire textbooks, and certainly no heavenly announcement identifying the correct answers to the upcoming examination.

Just a student nurse, her reviewers, her worries, and a growing appreciation for the importance of perseverance.

One of the prayers I held close during that period was a simple appeal for concentration, confidence, and peace. I wanted God to understand how overwhelmed I felt, although I suspect an explanation was hardly necessary. I was conscious that the world contained far greater difficulties than my upcoming examination, but I also believed that I could bring my own concerns to Him without pretending they were insignificant to me.

I remember asking for help in remembering what I had studied and applying that knowledge correctly. I asked for enough calm to think clearly and enough confidence to avoid allowing fear to interfere with my answers. I prayed for the people around me to understand how much preparation mattered to me, and I asked for peace afterwards, whatever the examination might bring.

Looking back, I think the most meaningful part of that prayer was not the request to pass.

It was the request to be able to walk out of the examination room knowing that I had done my best.

There is a difference between wanting an outcome and being prepared to accept the uncertainty surrounding it. At that point, I was still learning how to distinguish the two. I could control whether I attended our review sessions, whether I listened, and how diligently I studied. I could not know which questions would appear or guarantee that every answer would come easily.

That uncertainty was uncomfortable.

And perhaps that was precisely why I needed to pray.

As our twenty-day in-house review approached its conclusion, we were given an opportunity to step away from the usual routine of lectures and practice examinations. During the final three days, our Catholic school, USJ-R Cebu, together with PRN-Cebu, arranged a pilgrimage to different churches.

For a group of aspiring nurses who had spent so much time surrounded by notes and examination questions, the opportunity felt particularly meaningful.

It was also, I must admit, a welcome change of scenery.

By then, our reviewers had become such constant companions that I would not have been surprised if nursing concepts had begun appearing in my dreams. We had studied extensively, discussed rationales, worried about our performance, and spent countless hours preparing ourselves for what lay ahead.

Now we were visiting churches, praying together, and reflecting on the journey that had brought us to this point.

There is something distinctive about entering a church when you are carrying a particular worry. You may have visited churches countless times before, attended Mass since childhood, and become familiar with the prayers and traditions of your faith. Yet the experience can feel different when your own circumstances give those familiar words a more personal meaning.

For me, those visits became an opportunity to acknowledge everything I had been unable to resolve through studying alone.

I had prepared as much as I could. There were still things I did not know, topics I found difficult, and questions that made me uncertain. I was approaching an examination that represented years of effort, and I wanted reassurance that I would be capable of meeting the challenge.

During our pilgrimage, I prayed for guidance, clarity of mind, and the courage to face whatever awaited us.

I also thought about my family.

Behind my ambition to become a nurse were people who had encouraged me, supported my education, and believed that I could accomplish something worthwhile. Their sacrifices were part of my journey, even when they were not physically present during our review sessions.

My mother’s words returned to me.

“You can’t go anywhere if you don’t know how to sacrifice even just one hour for God.”

I smiled at the memory.

How amusing that I had once considered an hour in church such an unreasonable demand, yet here I was, willingly participating in a pilgrimage shortly before one of the most important examinations of my life. Apparently, a little academic anxiety had accomplished what years of maternal reminders had struggled to achieve.

I could almost imagine my mother raising an eyebrow if I told her.

But I was beginning to appreciate the lesson in a way I had not understood before. Faith was becoming less about attending church because I had been reminded to do so and more about recognising why I wanted to be there.

Of course, travelling with my reviewmates meant that the pilgrimage was not composed entirely of solemn reflection. We were still the same group of young people who could turn almost any occasion into an opportunity for photographs, conversations, and the occasional ridiculous pose.

We had shared the pressures of preparing for the board examination, and by then, we understood one another’s anxieties rather well. We knew the frustration of getting answers wrong, the satisfaction of finally understanding difficult concepts, and the peculiar exhaustion that came from spending days trying to remember an extraordinary amount of information.

Somewhere along the way, we began referring to ourselves as the survivors.

It was a rather dramatic title, considering that we were technically still preparing for an examination. But I suppose nursing students have always possessed a certain talent for exaggerating their academic suffering. After years of clinical rotations, sleepless nights, case studies, and review sessions, we felt that we had earned the right to be slightly theatrical.

Besides, the survivors sounded considerably more impressive than a group of anxious graduates who desperately wanted to pass the board examination.

And we wore the title proudly.

What made those days memorable was the companionship. We were approaching an uncertain moment together, each carrying individual ambitions but sharing a common goal. There was comfort in knowing that the people beside me understood exactly why the examination mattered.

We laughed, prayed, and took photographs, perhaps without realising how much those ordinary moments would eventually mean to us.

At the time, I was concerned with passing the examination. I wanted to remember nursing concepts, answer questions correctly, and complete the next stage of my professional journey. I did not think much about how quickly our lives might change afterwards.

Soon, we would no longer be spending every day together in the same review environment. Our individual careers would begin taking shape. Different opportunities, responsibilities, and circumstances would gradually determine where each of us went next.

But during those final days, we still belonged to the same little chapter.

We were reviewmates, fellow aspiring nurses, and companions in an experience that had tested our patience and strengthened our determination.

I sometimes wonder whether my younger self understood how meaningful those days would become. She was probably too occupied worrying about examination questions to appreciate the significance of the people around her. She wanted answers, reassurance, and preferably a very detailed list of topics guaranteed to appear in the NLE.

I cannot blame her.

At that age, the future seemed to depend on passing one examination, and I had not yet learned how much of adulthood involves continuing to work towards things whose outcomes we cannot completely predict.

What I did know was that I wanted to become a nurse, and I believed God had accompanied me through the journey.

I had not always been the most patient student. I had made mistakes, doubted my abilities, and occasionally allowed fear to become larger than the task in front of me. But I had continued studying, seeking guidance, and trying to improve.

There was a quiet satisfaction in recognising that effort.

By the end of our pilgrimage, the Nursing Licensure Examination was almost upon us. December 18 and 19 were no longer distant dates printed on a schedule. They were becoming part of the immediate future, bringing with them all the excitement and apprehension we had spent weeks attempting to manage.

We had attended our review sessions. We had studied our textbooks, answered practice questions, and corrected countless mistakes. We had travelled together, shared our worries, and visited churches to pray for guidance.

There was little left to do except continue preparing and trust that our efforts would serve us well.

I thought again about my mother and the hour she had once asked me to give to God.

Back then, I had measured that hour according to what it would take away from my day. During my review, I began to see it differently. Prayer gave me an opportunity to examine my priorities, acknowledge my fears, and remember that my worth as a person was greater than any examination result.

I still wanted to pass, naturally.

I would have been delighted if heaven had seen fit to make the examination questions particularly familiar.

But I was also learning to ask for something beyond a favourable result: the ability to do my part with diligence and meet the outcome with faith.

I cannot claim that every worry disappeared after our pilgrimage. I was still a nursing graduate facing a national examination, and there is only so much composure one can reasonably expect from someone in that position.

But when I returned to my reviewers, I carried my mother’s words with a little more understanding.

She had asked me to give God an hour.

During those final days, I was learning that even when my schedule was filled with things I considered urgent, there was room to make time for what mattered to my faith.

And when December 18 finally came, I would have my pencils, my examination permit, the knowledge I had worked to acquire, and the prayers I had carried throughout our review.

Whether I would remember every nursing rationale remained to be seen.

But at least one of my mother’s lessons had finally stayed in my head.

Next in Review Days Adventure: The Big Day — NLE 2011.

— Just Anj