Tuesday, November 3, 2015

A Most Tenuous Topic

Even this seemingly benign photo is probably doing more to red-flag this blog and to invite scrutiny from the testing Nazis than is prudent. C'est la vie.


Late in this calendar year I will take a test that is more important in terms of my future than has been any other test I've ever taken in my life. The SAT was important both times I took it. (Sometimes it really is worth it to take the SAT twice. My first time through it I did well. I nailed the thing my second time through.) The LSAT and mCAT were both important, as at those points in my educational career I wasn't entirely certain what options were open and needed to be prepared for either law school or medical school. I don't recommend preparing for both simultaneously. I didn't exactly do that myself. I took them eight weeks apart, which is probably closer than a sane person would take two of such vastly different tests of such magnitude, but it is at least doable at that interval.

All of those tests are ancient history and not entirely relevant anymore, however, as step numero uno of the behemoth test I'll be facing at or near the end of this academic year dwarfs every other exam I've ever taken.  People have been known to lose their sanity over this exam, or so I'm told. In fairness, some of those who supposedly lost their sanity in connection with the exam had only the most marginal of acquaintances with the very concept of stability. Still, the concept that it's a test that is known to screw around with everything one has ever thought of or felt about oneself even to the most confident of individuals on the planet is a point I do not take lightly.

You might have noticed that I have yet to mention the name of this exam. I won't, or at the very least I will not do so in today's blog. After reading the cautionary material, I've become so paranoid that I don't want to put anything in this blog that might cause it to show up on a google search and hence fall under  some test Nazi's radar. i intend to fly well under the radar on this one.

On the other tests I've taken, test security was addressed. With this exam, multiple sections concerning "irregular behavior" are in the earliest information disseminated to prospective test takers. When I read the term irregular behavior  I wondered if those charged with preparing students for this exam referred to the borderline Aspies, schizophrenics, and others with special needs who are likely present in the med school population just as they are in every other segment of society. I thought the ban on irregular behavior pertained maybe to self-stimming or to conversing aloud with the voices in one's head during the test. I thought wrong. Irregular behavior refers to anything that might interfere with the integrity of the test. We're not to share anything from the test with anyone. Not with lovers. Not with offspring. Not with womb-mates, i.e. twin siblings. Not with test preparation material publishers. Not with anyone.

Well in advance, we're already studying for this killer of an exam. We study to some degree in groups, though much of this study will be a very solitary effort. In one of my study groups, several of the members aren't particularly interested in prepping for the test. I'm a bit worried for them, though it's their own problem if they fail to see the light very, very soon. I cannot learn the material for them.

In the end, I'm a proficient test-preparer and a good test-taker. I don't procrastinate. Chances are that I'll be fine, though I do not underestimate the enormity of this milestone exam.

I'll probably write about this again in the upcoming months, as at some point classes will end and preparing for the test will encompassing nearly all of my waking hours. Then again, in the interest of test integrity and of flying under the radar, perhaps I will not. Time alone will tell.


12 comments:

  1. You've never gotten an F before, have you? ;-)

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  2. No. This test is in a league all of its own, though. I'm actually more worried about the ordeal of preparing than about the test itself (sort of like for a colonoscopy). I don't want to jinx myself, but I suspect I'll get through this just as I've gotten through everything else. It's mostly the tedious studying I dread.

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    1. I suspect you'll do fine. I have met a lot of idiots who have MDs. You are not an idiot. When it's over, you'll feel like you took a big crap.

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  5. Whatever happens, happens. I guess that's not the most reassuring encouragement, but it's probably the most accurate. Just study hard, do what you do best; with your history there's no reason to suspect that this will play out any differently for you. Anxiety is a difficult thing to overcome, however. When I trip up, it's because I'm projecting too far into the future and putting far too much weight on something that, in the large scheme of things, is actually pretty trivial. I don't mean to imply that this is trivial, but I think in regards to whatever you are aiming to do, this test is just a tiny piece of your whole picture. It's a part that you need to accomplish well in order to get to that next level, a level that you are probably more than capable of entering already regardless of what results from the test.

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    1. You're right. and I'm honestly not quite so concerned about the exam itself as I am about the prep. I can't walk in with just the information i'm carrying inside my head right now even though i probably know what i need to know enough to pass it already. i still have to go through at least the motions of preparing.

      The people in control of this test are so freaking paranoid that they read-flag people for going into the test knowing too little, as in those people are taking the test to gain information about the test and not making a good-faith attempt to pass the test. I've not heard of it happening, but the people overseeing the test as a whole have the power to black a person from ever taking the test again (and consequently from EVER becoming a physician or surgeon) based on irregular behaviors and their perception that a test-taker has some agenda regarding gaining information about the test. I know that if I took the test this morning i would know enough that my performance would be viewed as a legitimate attempt to pass the exam, but it's still freaky. these people fingerprint you if you use the bathroom during the eight-hour tasting procedure except during the fifteen-minute break. (They also fingerprint you after the fifteen-minute break.)

      Doctors don not talk about what's on this test. they're even retroactively spooked about the whole testing security thing.
      It's probably worse than the mormon temple "never tell what goes on here" stuff. in the olden days (anything from sometime around 1990 or 1991back) Mormons in their temple ceremony took some sort of oath pantomiming the actions of slitting their own throats and disemboweling themselves as a way of pledging that either that's what they would do to themselves or that's what would be done to them (I'm not sure which; I'll ask my dad) if they ever revealed the secrets of the temple ordinances. My dad, despite having done all of the pantomiming mumbo jumbo, has told me all about the temple ceremony. He's never said a damned thing, however, about the exam which shall remain nameless because i don't want to red-flag myself so that I show up in a test Nazi google search.

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    2. "red-flag," BTW, not "read-flag"

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