Test Day

Bill Maher once had a joke about restless leg syndrome.  He was basically stating it is not a real disease and no one has it.  I can assure you he is quite wrong.

When I was young I was into Muay Thai.  It left my right leg a little banged up.  Doctors cannot pinpoint the issue, but it is assumed it is a nerve problem.  It hurts now and then, but the main issue is sometimes I will get restless leg.  Unfortunately, it is usually if I am anxious about something.  Basically, I am already nervous about something that is going to take place the next day, and on top of that, I do not get to sleep.  The leg kicks all night making it impossible to sleep.

The last time I looked at the clock, it was past 4am.  I got up at 6am to go take the test. 

I got to the center, and surprisingly, I didn’t really feel that tired.  Maybe a little bit of adrenaline kicked in.  Well, and the five hour energy drink. 

I cannot go into specific questions on my test.  I felt like I did ok.  The job knowledge and English expression were straight forward.  The bio section can be challenging.  It is 77 questions in 42 minutes regarding your experiences.  When the questions are just multiple choice, it is easy to fly through them.  For example (this is a question from a study guide, not from my test):

“During the last six months, how often have you worked overtime to get something done?

A. Very often

B. Often

C. Sometimes

D. Seldom

E. Very rarely”

That’s easy to answer and move forward quickly.  However, several of the questions will have this as the next question:

“If you answered A, B, C, or D to the previous question, list the approximate dates and how much overtime you worked each time.”

Not only is this during a time crunch, there is a character restriction.  Something like 30 works maximum.  So the Bio section is an exercise in time management.  My plan worked well.  I would answer the multiple choice questions, and then mark the questions that required a text answer.  After I finished all the multiple choice questions, I then went back and answered the text questions.  That will at least make sure you get all the questions answered.

Last section of the test was the essay.  I felt like this section murdered my score.  Maybe the lack of sleep was catching up with me.  Maybe adrenaline dump.  Maybe the five hour energy drink is more like a two hour energy drink.  Or maybe I just didn’t practice enough.

For anyone that stumbles across this blog looking for FSOT advice, I cannot stress this enough:  Practice the essay part.  Write an essay in 30 minutes every day leading up to the test.  I practiced a little and thought, “Oh I got this.”  Wrong.  Those 30 minutes feel like you are on the Titanic running around looking for a lifeboat.  Those 30 minutes go by extremely fast. 

I did manage to get 5 short paragraphs written, but they felt very weak to me.  I only need a score of 6 on the essay to advance though, so hopefully, I’ll get a 6 just for having decent structure.

And now I wait.  It will be roughly a month before I get my scores.