I have just gone a little crazy over the test prep thing. Honestly, it’s addictive 😛
So here’s my typical day:
– get up at 8 AM
– check email, job sites, blogs
– chat for a couple of hours – my not preferred but usual channel of communication
– lunch
– memorize some Japanese vocabulary
– read up on grammar while listening to CD
－GMAT/GRE practice questions
－hmm… that usually puts me into a nap
– watch some Japanese drama – entertainment with some educational effect
– read something else – I try to find something educational
– do some Japanese test practice questions (that usually puts me in a really bad mood considering I’m at a scary barely passing 70% right now)
– dinner
– basketball/jogging/rollerblading
– more chatting 🙂
Hmm… I guess if I can fit a job in there somewhere I’d be like the perfect student. Look how studious I am! And I don’t even have to turn in any homework!
OK, so I decided that I’m going to stop studying for GMAT. I don’t really see the point… It’s just ridiculously boring considering how picky these questions are and I’m not learning anything from all these questions. OK, so sometimes while reading these stupid impossible to comprehend passages I’ll be like, oh, so the evolution of primates’ cognitive abilities actually had something to do with whether they are preys or predators in their natural environments. Interesting. Yeah, like I’m going to remember that in a week. I think I studied enough to give me a decent score, and I should put my time and energy into something else.
What else, you ask? Why, the GRE of course 🙂 I took a practice exam and it’s not as bad as I thought. Although reading some of those antonym questions I’ll be like, hmm, is this English? At least memorizing vocabulary could prove helpful later on in life when I read scholarly papers long and deep enough to prompt the use of words such as “amalgamate” (mix combine unite societies) or “picaresque” (involving clever rogues or adventurers). Alas, before submerging myself into the wondrous megacosm of GRE, I was but a philistine, incognizant of the delectation that one can excogitate from discrepating the alterity between “sagacious” (having sound judgment perceptive wise like a sage) and “salacious” (obscene) and “salubrious” (healthful).
Er… Where was I? Oh yeah, how fun it is to study 🙂 Sarcasm aside, I derive a great sense of accomplishment when my scores improve from 70% to 72% to 75%, or when I look at the vocabulary list from two days ago and actually remember most of the words. It’s an even greater sense of accomplishment when I get back the scores for a standardized test and see myself in the top percentile, because I at least have some sense of how I compare to others on one scale. It’s not often that you can find a standard scale to compare yourself to others on. Granted, standardized tests often are criticized for being unfair, being a concompetent judge of abilities, a money making tool for companies that will remain unnamed, but do you really have a better way? When I send in my application to the admission office, I don’t know whether they will like my work experience or my statement of purpose, I don’t know how my grades and my undergraduate school compare to the applicants, heck, I’m even worried about what’s written on those rec letters. But at least I know how I did on my test.
Furthermore, preparing for the tests give me a goal to work toward, as I watch myself improve, I know what I need to work on and what I can put aside (like 8th grade math questions). I also know what I put in directly affects what I get. I can’t change my grades for the last four years, but at least I have a way to prove that I may be better than what’s on that transcript.
Oh yeah. Passing the Japanese Language Proficiency Exam is just for fun. It’ll be a challenge, which means that I will have to try hard, which is something I’m not used to doing. I just want to prove that I can. I don’t know when I’ll use it, if ever, but I do think that anything you put your mind and effort into can help you in the future. Even if you don’t use it at work or in school, so what? It’ll still be a special asset. For me, what matters more than anything is that I actually enjoy studying Japanese 🙂
OMG this is a really long rant. Me go rollerblade. <-- Talk about bad English 😛
Just something I thought made sense:
Goodwin and Driscoll (1980, pp. 59-60) note that standardized tests have the following qualities:
They provide a “systematic procedure for describing behaviors, whether in terms of numbers or categories.”
They include specified procedures for administration and scoring.
The test items are derived from experience, either by experiment or observation, rather than theory.
They have an established format and set of materials.
They present the same tasks and require the same response modes from all test takers.
They provide tables of norms (see standards for technical qualities) to which the scores of test takers can be compared in order to ascertain their relative standing.
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