Test Anxiety

I finished taking two major tests today. Although I don’t officially get the results for another thirteen weeks, there were some minor clues that the morning test won this round.

- Sadly I did not have a watch and was not good at gauging the time… when the proctor said 15 minutes remained I had only completed 30 out of the 50 questions.

- When I didn’t know the answers to questions 1-7, I skipped to the end of the test, Question 50, hoping things would be easier if I worked through the problems backwards. This seemed to be a good strategy and I was on a roll until Question 47. I knew how to do the problem, but it seemed like one critical value was missing from the problem statement. I was not to be deterred however, in attempting a solution, for a question I mostly understood. I assumed a value and got an answer that closely matched one of the multiple choice answers. Yay! I circled my scantron and flipped the page to Question 46. A nice diagram jumped off the page and introduced itself as the “little green friend“ who would help me with Question 46-47, and yes, my assumed value was slightly different from the given value in the picture. So even though I did not finish all 50 questions… I did do some of the questions twice – I don’t think that counts for anything.

- “Little Green Friends” were jumping off the pages talking to me during the test!!! (And they were not the helpful ones from Chemistry Class either)

- Near the end I resorted to this strategy: Calculate and obtain answer. If solution is a close match to any of the multiple choice answers, cross out that answer to narrow “educated” guess down to remaining three choices. (33% is better than 25%, right?)

And so I use the term “finished” loosely as I will be back… to face this test another day!!!! (I just hope it’s ready.)

P.S. Where do the proctors come from? Is there a pool of proctors? Is there a way that I can figure a proctor position into my retirement plans? (Do they allow proctors to heckle?)