badstar

Retook the CVE again. Failed. Again. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing wrong. The last time, I just blanked. On everything. This time, there were questions on material I don't remember ever learning. Oh- I actually got a lower score this time too. But I only missed it by four damned questions this time- three last time. I don't get why I can't get those couple of questions. I'm okay on audio and video technologies, but certain network things and standards and protocols....the very things I made sure to spend extra time studying- I even made myself extra flashcards on them and broke the information down from the other flashcards I had before so that it was one piece of information at a time instead of several. I studied the practice test so many times too. Hell, last time, I swear almost a quarter of my questions were on the practice test (pretty impressive when you consider that the test is 83 out of a pool of over eight hundred. This time, I probably had six or seven from the practice test.

I just don't understand what I'm doing wrong here and this whole thing reminds me so much of being back in high school, and my mother and stepfather lecturing me on and on and on about how I'm "smart" and the fact that I could blast right through French and Spanish classes with practically zero effort was a clear indicator that I should be able to do the same thing with algebra and biology.

Because I'm "smart"

don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I'm stupid...I'm not, though the lectures always made me feel like being "smart" (that was always the word, smart.) meant there was some sort of established checklist of items that you could tick off- you were good at French and Spanish and government and English and history and the non-math part of chemistry, but you also had to be good at algebra and trig and biology and economics and the math part of chemistry. Oh, and you had to take physics. Because smart people take physics. (I never took physics. I did take digital electronics and environmental biology for science classes in my senior year instead. Those didn't count though. They weren't physics. I was really good at soldering, for whatever that's worth. A good, practical skill. Right up there with spackling- which I'm also very good at (not that it takes much to be good at spackling) would that I had cause to use those skills though. I'd kick the rest of the world's ass at both.) Oh, and art classes don't mean anything. Even the ones that end up having you go to school on Saturdays or stay after a tennis practice for several hours to work on huge projects and learning lots of art history. They don't count.)

So yeah, right now I'm feeling like there's another box on the "smart" checklist that I can't tick off. Smart people can pass the CVE. (Assuming they've taken the class, done the studying...oh and been working in the freakin' field for two years.) But i didn't pass it. Twice now.

Ah well, at least I have my girlfriend here. She's been wonderful about this. Even agreed to go somewhere that she really didn't want to for a sandwich afterward (ended up liking the sandwich though and is willing to go back again sometime, despite the fact that both of our sandwiches needed to be remade on account of the chicken being cold (it wasn't supposed to be cold) and looking quite undercooked- once remade though, they were great...hehehe.)