Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Cur--sive??...

This past Saturday I took one of the more difficult tests that I have faced in my life: The LSAT. This is the uber-standardized test that plays a significant part getting people into law schools in Canada.

I was a tad nervous before the test, but went into it feeling strangely comfortable. Little did I know that the most difficult and stressful part of this 3 hour-plus exam would be the administrative hulabaloo right at the beginning.

Under normal contracts or tests of this nature, there is a statement that states that you will not cheat, not provide answers to others etc, and you are usually supposed to sign it. But not for the LSAT. Instead of simply signing the five-line statement, I was required to copy it out and then sign it. The worst part: it had to be copied out in cursive. Shit.

With the exception of my signature, I hadn't used cursive writing since grade 6. I quickly realized I had forgotten what many of the letters were supposed to look like, so I elected to make some up (after all, the test supervisor had said "cursive, or your best non-printing writing). It was atrocious.

Nothing could have prepared me for the stress of such a task. One by one, the people around me dropped their pencils to their desks as they completed the statement with ease, while I struggled having only completed half of the damn thing. It soon became clear that I was the only one left, as the test supervisor repeatedly asked when I'd be done. That was not fun.

I'm not sure where such a task came from or why it was necessary. Perhaps it is the real part of the LSAT that law schools look at, nevermind all those other mind-bending multiple-choice questions.

If this is the case, I'm screwed.

1 comment:

Soaking up the Sun said...

cursive?? what if you've never learnt cursive? how is that fair? ugh. that sux that you were on the spot...

how did the rest of the test go?