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The Test Plus Soon Unfrozen River
Mar. 10th, 2015 09:37 amDreamed: Asian New Year, the city – San Francisco? – erupting with song and celebration, and I was taking some sort of test. You know. That test that determines every subsequent event in your life and if you don’t do well on it, fuggetabout it: It’s the Welcome Crew at WalMart for you.
There’d been some interruption in the test, but now the test was continuing with a question that gave me what appeared to be a simple row of numbers to add. I added them and got “3” as the sum. Except “3” didn’t appear as one of the multiple choice answers.
So I added the figures again. Three. Definitely the answer. Unless – Wait? Was there some strange commutative or associative function for simple addition that I’d forgotten about? There was actually an aid for this question – an elaborate brocaded Chinese banner with beaded fringe like an abacus, which we could use to determine the right answer if we wanted. Except I didn’t know how to use it.
I’d flown through the earlier questions on the test with no issues at all, so this question was very frustrating to me. Why was I wasting so much time on it? The clock was ticking. Twenty minutes. I knew this was absolutely the wrong test-taking strategy, that when a question stymies you, you have to just ignore it, live with getting (at least) one wrong answer. But I couldn’t let this one go.
Got up from my seat and tried to run into the next room where Ben was taking the test – surely he’d be able to give me the right answer. But his room was guarded. And I realized, Right. That would be cheating. They’re not gonna let you do that.
Temperatures have returned to seasonal norms, which is to say that spr-r-r-r-ing is in the air! Next up: robins and crocuses. The Hudson is still frozen over, but I wouldn’t walk on it.
There’d been some interruption in the test, but now the test was continuing with a question that gave me what appeared to be a simple row of numbers to add. I added them and got “3” as the sum. Except “3” didn’t appear as one of the multiple choice answers.
So I added the figures again. Three. Definitely the answer. Unless – Wait? Was there some strange commutative or associative function for simple addition that I’d forgotten about? There was actually an aid for this question – an elaborate brocaded Chinese banner with beaded fringe like an abacus, which we could use to determine the right answer if we wanted. Except I didn’t know how to use it.
I’d flown through the earlier questions on the test with no issues at all, so this question was very frustrating to me. Why was I wasting so much time on it? The clock was ticking. Twenty minutes. I knew this was absolutely the wrong test-taking strategy, that when a question stymies you, you have to just ignore it, live with getting (at least) one wrong answer. But I couldn’t let this one go.
Got up from my seat and tried to run into the next room where Ben was taking the test – surely he’d be able to give me the right answer. But his room was guarded. And I realized, Right. That would be cheating. They’re not gonna let you do that.
Temperatures have returned to seasonal norms, which is to say that spr-r-r-r-ing is in the air! Next up: robins and crocuses. The Hudson is still frozen over, but I wouldn’t walk on it.
