Sunday, June 14, 2009

'Twas The Night Before...

With under twenty-four hours to go before my placement test, I'm a bit nervous. I'm not entirely sure what my plan b is should this not work out, although I have a few possibilities running around in the back of my head.

I'm done studying though.

Back in college I used to laugh at the people who brought their study notes to their exams, trying to look everything over at the last minute. My laughter there, and lack of last-minute studying, was broadly fueled by confidence that I'd do well. That confidence isn't here this time, although the underlying rationale is still pretty much the same.
  • I've spent lots of time looking over my pre-cal materials.
  • Spending another few hours probably won't let me remember the things I don't as of now.
  • Spending another few hours realizing what I /don't/ remember probably /will/ make me more nervous, which won't help, and might hurt.

So that's that. If I know it now, I'll know it on the test. If I don't know it now, I'll have a 20% shot at guessing correctly.

I have a pretty good idea of where I stand. If the test were designed as a final exam, going out of it's way to make questions tricky and bring up relatively minor details, I'd do poorly. If it were designed to simply gauge my understanding of things at a broad level, I'd do just fine. I suspect this test will be somewhere in between the two though, and I can't predict my performance.

I do know that I'll be glad when this is over, and I can start figuring out my "next steps".