The truth about taking your NREMT

Many students taking the NREMT have to climb two “mountains,” in a sense.

The first mountain: Learning enough to understand the exam content and pass. This is the part everyone talks about.

The second mountain: Overcoming this belief: “I’m a bad test-taker.”

The bad news is, Mountain #1 is always going to be something we have to deal with. The good news is, Mountain #2 can literally be eliminated - you don’t have to deal with it in the end. I’m not trying to give you motivational platitudes or a “you can do it,” attitude - I think that would be a waste of time.

I’m trying to shed light on this: People that believe they are bad test-takers actually end up doing worse on the test because of that belief. That is a studied fact.* Here’s how this looks in practice:

1. You tell yourself you’re a bad test-taker.

2. That thought constantly sits in your head in class and while you study.

3. When you train on practice questions and start to miss questions, you tell yourself: I know the information, I just suck at tests.

4. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because you’re blaming any difficulties on how you tend to test, not at all focusing on the important component: Learning the necessary information.

EMS attracts many people that don’t love academics, because we love hands-on, real-life learning. And that’s a great benefit to us in our careers! Unfortunately, though, that means a lot of EMS students also have this mindset from years back that we’re “bad test-takers.”

I’ll give you an example to consider and then a challenge for you.

Imagine you sit down and in front of you is placed a 20 question test about how to drive a car. You take the test, you pass, no big deal. What caused you to pass? Was it a belief that you could pass? Was it you having read books about driving a vehicle? Was it someone tutoring you? Was it a natural ability to drive a car?

It doesn’t really matter if those other factors helped you. You passed because you knew the information. If you know the information well enough, you pass. If you didn’t know the information, you would fail. Nothing can substitute for simply knowing the information.

If you know the information, if you’ve put in the time, and you know what each question on the test is asking you, you will pass. There is no amount of test anxiety that will stop you from passing if you know the information well enough.

Like I said: The bad news is, we all have to learn enough to pass the test. The good news is, you can put all your energy into simply preparing for the test and knowing the things you need to know, instead of thinking about how much you hate tests.

This is simple, but it’s not easy. So here’s the challenge:

Put in the time studying. Not thinking about studying. Not thinking about how intimidating the test can be. Not hearing “war stories” about how bad the test is, from medics who have taken the test. Just studying. Reading, recalling notes, completing practice questions. Putting in the work. Focus on Mountain #1 - it’s what will matter in the end.

If you have classmates that would benefit from thoughts like these or might want some more free training resources, forward them this email or give them this link.

Happy studying - you can do this!

Reed (LaunchPoint co-founder) 🚀

*This is from a psychology based article about test-taking. Holmes, J. D. Teaching of Psychology.