"So take this broken offering and make me whole,
Set my feet upon the road that leads me home,
let me walk as one fixed upon the goal,
even though I've got a thousand miles to go..."

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Testing

So, remember college? Or the latest standardized test you took? You're sitting there, methodically working through the exam questions, feeling pretty decent about your progress, when BAM! You hit a brick wall. You attack a problem from every possible angle, wracking your brain for reasons why you continuously get the wrong answer. You may grimace. You may sigh impatiently. You may gnaw the eraser off your pencil. But you do all this subtly, because you're crammed in a room with a host of other students who don't want to hear you do what you really want to do. Which is scream. Throw things. Maybe cry, just a little bit, out of sheer frustration.

Behold, the glory of online exams:

Today I took my first finance exam, which will be a weekly trial. On three separate questions, I was SURE I was doing everything right. I mean, this stuff is open book. The formulas are right there. My calculator does all the work. But my answers would NOT match up with any of the choices. So yes, I screamed. I almost threw things. I most definitely cried. Then I guessed, because there was nothing else to do.

By sheer luck, I got all three guesses correct and aced the exam. And then I cried again, out of relief.

Imagine those reactions in a real classroom. I'm sold on this online learning stuff!

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