We the students (of the graduating class of May 2019); feel that adding essay questions to exam one is not conducive to a learning environment that will train us for the NCLEX. It should be stressed that we fully support our instructors in creating different testing questions for each section and want to continue to foster an honest and equal learning experience for all. We do not feel however, that adding essays will achieve anything other than making a difficult subject matter more burdensome on us.

Henry Ford has revamped its whole program and we are one of the first classes to undergo a lot of the changes ( from our first semester Pharmacology layout, to enacting the 80/20 rule for grading, and almost being kicked out of the program for not passing check offs the first two times instead of the mandatory three) We have come a long way since first semester. We have worked very hard to be where we are at this point in our education. The school is already monitoring how these differing variables are affecting pass rates, we do not feel that adding a variable like essay questions will increase the chances of success for the students or the colleges success in obtaining future student enrollment. In the end we are paying for this education, those of us who were not participants in this question sharing issue do not want to have to pay for an extra semester if we do not do well on testing.

It should be made clear we understand that OB is a very unique field of nursing with very unique nursing strategies and we are all very dedicated to getting the most out of our education from this course. To add essays to a semester where we are already burdened from extra courses included in our workload, the financial strain of graduation ( licensing fees, graduation costs, etc.) and about 50% of us failing our first medical/surgical exam; seems like an extra punishment for something most of us didn't participate in.

Throughout this whole program we have been taught the concept of advocacy and how important it is to advocate for our patients as well as our own well being as nurses. We are now advocating for ourselves and future OB students. We want this subject matter to be mentally stimulating, we want to earn our grades just as previous graduating classes have but we do not feel that we need to be punished for the actions of a few.