The
University I attended, that will remain nameless due to concerns over retributive
legal action should they deem my orienting reference as in some way defamatory,
has a mandatory senior's symposium. There are no academic credits for
attending, as in, we don't get graded or hourly credits towards the completion
of our degree program. We do have the
benefit of living through an exposure to an application of the golden rule;
whereby, the one who has the gold makes the rules.
Part of this symposium included taking a
test at the end-of-degree-pursuits. You know, to find out how well all of that
knowledge stuck. I'm here to tell you...it didn't. Perhaps it was designed to
test our ability to guess? If so, then from my test results one can conclude
that I am upper-average to good at guessing; plus or minus seven points to the
raw performance score. Yes, they asked statistical questions, which reminded me
of those annoying grade school word-fraction-problems I had all become
enthralled with over the years. "If-Then" questions always prompted
from my reasoning a vivid "It depends" answer to it. What was frustrating, in all those years I
faced questions like those, I never got it depends as a choice; I was bummed.
Now the
down side of all of that was the insidious corruption to my usual calm based on
competence. After the test, way afterwards, as in the late hours of the night,
(or early hours of the morning) I would be asking myself what IS the answer to one
of those questions? I had no idea. I realize that I will never be stopped on a
street, then while giving directions to points of interest find it necessary to
be prepared for a follow on question such as "Oh yes, and by the way
what's a chi tailed test?" Not even
in a job interview could I conceive anyone tossing that one up for me to take a
swing at.
I mean
really. I can see me in the future; an ocean liner listing towards the sea
having just struck a reef. The main
dining room filling with billows of oily black smoke. I'm in a crowd of panic
stricken people all frantically trying to escape; what to say?
"Oh you know I think if I had a
serotonin reuptake blocker I'd not be freaking out and crapping my pants right
now. Does anyone happen to have any on them?" Hell I'd toss such a goof to
the sharks first thing. So yeah, useful knowledge is often the gooey caramel
center of the chocolate candy students are forced to memorized; facts all for
the sake of scholastic discipline.
"You don't need this, but it was swell
making you dance to the pistol fire. And
you kept your dignity and didn’t break down crying, that’s good, that’s very
good." I was prompted by the last questions on the computer I was testing
on, If I had difficulty with understanding the format of the test? Was it
difficult to navigate the tools of the instrument? I wasn't concerned with
those facets in the least, and readily replied they were not difficult. When
prodded by the follow on question,
"Do you think this test adequately evaluated
your degree pursuits" I considered to intentionally misspelling NO. It outfoxed me with allowing only a bubble to
fill in. YES/NO. Black as the heart of
my rebellious sense of humor, I was denied my intellectual spite. But hey, they
brought brownies for the post test celebration, so it wasn't a complete wash
No comments:
Post a Comment