{"id":115,"date":"2012-09-09T01:35:35","date_gmt":"2012-09-09T01:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/?p=115"},"modified":"2012-09-10T02:11:33","modified_gmt":"2012-09-10T02:11:33","slug":"cset-test-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/2012\/09\/09\/cset-test-day\/","title":{"rendered":"CSET test day"},"content":{"rendered":"

First off, happy 50th<\/sup> birthday to my friend Jeff; he starts off a year of people turning 50 all around me.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no other way to put it: the CSET test was brutal.\u00a0 The rules alone were enough to put one off (no electronics of any kind that have an on\/off button, no mechanical pencils, no pens, only water in a label-less, clear container and an apple or banana can be brought into the classroom, but it won\u2019t be near you and you can only access them once.\u00a0 Once the door closes, you are allowed one bathroom break until you leave).\u00a0 Well, since I did my usual trick of drinking lots of coffee just prior to coming in, I had to go several times just before the door closed.\u00a0 The \u201creading of the rules\u201d part after the door had closed took 45 minutes.\u00a0 Only then did the five hour clock begin.\u00a0 By that time, I had to go to the bathroom again, but I held it through test 1 of 3.<\/p>\n

Armed with 12 sharpened wooden pencils (which I despise), I started test #1 on World History.\u00a0 The multiple choice was tricky, but I found the three essay questions to be pretty straight forward.\u00a0 As my new buddy John had mentioned, there would be an essay question on China, and there was.\u00a0 I felt confident in my answer until I looked up the information after the test\u2026 I had (confidently) put down the wrong dynasty name in the first sentence!\u00a0 I had put down the name of an old friend of mine instead.\u00a0 His name is Zhang\u2026 but there is no Zhang dynasty.\u00a0 Oops.<\/p>\n

The World History test took me almost two hours to complete, largely because my hand was cramping so bad on the three essay questions that I couldn\u2019t quickly finish them.\u00a0 Wow, this only gave me three hours to complete the other two tests.\u00a0 This, I suppose, is why they don\u2019t recommend that you take three tests in a single setting.\u00a0 I would have to go faster.<\/p>\n

The US History test seemed harder than the World History test, but yet again, the essay questions seemed very doable.\u00a0 My hand still cramped, but not as bad this time.\u00a0 I also wasn\u2019t as verbose.\u00a0 I finished this test in an hour.<\/p>\n

I was absolutely stunned by the difficulty of the last \u201ccatch-all\u201d test of California History, Civics and Economics.\u00a0 I had aced all the practice tests, so I didn\u2019t feel I needed to study as hard on this one.\u00a0 I was very, very wrong.\u00a0 Most of the time, I must have had a blank look on my face as I puzzled through each question.\u00a0 Also, I was getting very \u201cbrain tired\u201d and I was about at my limit.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t help that a lot of the questions seemed to be of the \u201cchoose the best of these” type questions.\u00a0 With all the answers more or less correct, and one being more correct than the rest, I had a hard time deciding.\u00a0 At least the essays were easy (though with severe hand cramps, I began alternating hands out of desperation).\u00a0 Sort of funny, but I was just warming up on the first essay when I hit the bottom of the page and realized that unlike the other two first essays, this was meant to be a one page answer, not two.\u00a0 I had to erase and simplify my answer (all the while stressing out because I was already on pencil #8, and it was sort of impractical to sharpen your pencils in this room \u2013 let\u2019s just say that sharpening pencils was highly discouraged.).\u00a0 In other words, my first essay was weak, being all intro and no body.\u00a0 The other two were better.\u00a0 I also finished this test in an hour.\u00a0 Four hours total to take these three tests; my brain was mush.\u00a0 I was also one of four people left in the room.\u00a0 We had started with around 25 (each taking a different test to discourage peeking\/cheating).\u00a0 I got to the car, looked up my Chinese dynasties (shoot; missed that one!) and then went home.\u00a0 I my brain felt completely shredded for the remainder of the day.<\/p>\n

I do not know if I passed any of the three tests, though I suspect that I probably passed two of them\u2026 maybe three\u2026 maybe zero \u2013 I don\u2019t know! \u00a0The results won\u2019t come out for a month.\u00a0 Until then, I sort of have to wait and hope I passed them all, and also hope that I didn\u2019t lose too much data if I did not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First off, happy 50th birthday to my friend Jeff; he starts off a year of people turning 50 all around me. There\u2019s no other way to put it: the CSET test was brutal.\u00a0 The rules alone were enough to put … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions\/116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}