A broken string of testing successes

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One thing I have to do to get my California teaching credential is to prove I know the Constitution. The easiest way to meet this requirement is to take a free, hundred-question test.

So I signed up to take the test and was appalled to get only 89 questions right. Appalled. The test was not difficult and I was embarrassed. Yes, granted, the test was pass/fail with only 70 correct answers needed to pass, but 89?!?!

The professor who gives the test, however, was very impressed. Double checked the results. He has people who have to take the test over and over (and over) again to finally pass it. My score was the highest he had seen in years. The highest since a local school district imported a bunch of Canadian teachers.

Canadians.....

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I was concerned about taking the CSET, and rightly so. It has a reputation for being impossibly difficult. And when I did finally take the first two subtests, they asked me questions about Caribbean writers I never knew existed. The CSET is impossible to study for. I could have crammed for three weeks, yet never thought of checking out the haps in Jamaica.

Sheesh.

Anyway, when I got the results back for English Subtest I and English Subtest II, I received the highest possible marks on both.

Let's hope I do so well on subtests III and IV later this month....

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Tonight I went to a [---------] class that [---------]. The class is big on teaching me to test students on things other than simple knowledge--things like taking that simple knowledge and applying/synthesizing/evaluating/etcing it. (Remember this--there's an irony here.)

I was not nearly enough prepared for today's midterm--I missed class last week (we were dining with Anamazing, and hanging with Silly Marie and Brother Steed). I had intended to study yesterday and today, but instead was either on the freeway or talking to insurance investigators or picking up a car from the mechanic or visiting the DMV (and so on and so on, hour after hour) and skipping meals.

I arrived to class early and kind fellow students helped me study.

However, the test was merely a spewing of hundreds of facts that I apparently should have memorized by rote.

That was it.

Page after page of Give Me This Fact Without Context or Explanation Just Repeat Word for Word What I Said As I Said It and Do It Now.

Page after page after page....

(sigh)

And so the string is broken.


What a lovely week I'm having, says the pity-addicted person.


(Note: As with any addict, you should refrain from giving them what they want.)


What a lovely week.