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Great news, I passed my PANRE!!! It was such a relief. I spent so much time building up to this and now being done is fantastic. I certainly had the added pressure of taking this exam in front of all of you, but honestly the biggest issue was my family. I had been taking time out of the house to study. It is almost impossible for me to study in my house with a two and a four year old living there. It certainly put a lot of pressure on my wife. She was great and gave me the time I needed, but it adds stress for everybody.
One big take away I want to give you is the issue of time. I have always been a very fast test taker. In PA school I was always the first person done on my exams. That does not mean I had the hi
ghest scores, just that I was the first one done. I purposely slowed myself down on the first section in an effort to read each question fully. I wanted to be sure I didn’t miss anything or make any dumb mistakes. I was shocked when I had five questions left and only four minutes to finish them in. The rest of the test I did a much better job of managing my time.
There are two things I think you should be working on. The first is to your practice tests with a timer. On the PANRE your given 60 question blocks and 60 minutes to finish them in. I was doing blocks of 100 questions for practice. What I found was that I could get far ahead with time. In only a 60 minute 60 question block you can’t get that far ahead. This made me a little nervous and its something you can practice very easily.
The second thing is keywords. You should really really know your keywords. That knowledge builds speed and confidence. It can’t be the only thing you know, but it is a huge help. I’m currently working on the finishing touches for the material I created while I was studying. This will be my first product. It will be keyword rich questions and hopefully be out in late August or early September. I’ve put together a special e-mail list just for people who really want to know what’s going on with that book. You can sign up here and you will only receive information about at the new study guide. I’ll keep you informed as to how you and when you can get it.