The war of words which time helped win.
No photos on this one. The reason for that is....oh maybe further in I will have some sort of inspiration but for now text will have to do.
So I did it...the test, entrance exam, fuck up filter.
However you put it was a sweat creating, tremor causing nightmare for me.
Really it shouldn't be, my enlishg is passable although I throw the gramatic rule book out the window on occasion and my spelling is sometimes ifey but I have been in the same lingual stream for my whole life.
Perhaps it's because it's been 18 years since I have had the halls of higher education under my feet, well foot in my case. 8 of those using a computer with spell check...hmmm maybe Dad was right in saying that the puter is a demon feeding on our minds. Sorry Dad that is another blog.
So in I hobble with my crutches to the library of the local college and was immediately greeted by Patty, a very nice lady librarian a few years younger than me, with a smile she said "You must be Gordon, I will be invigilating your test".
It sounds like a new sex act that you are sure is not pleasant nor safe or a really gross surgical procedure on a part of you that you can't normally see.
With the same bright cheery air that the Nazi's would offer a shower for a concentration camp detainee she motioned to a room in the corner and said "Go in and get comfortable ya I vil be zere ein und moment. Ok she didn't have the accent but
I had a strong feeling that she knew the english entrance exam was harder than what I had experienced some 20 years earlier.
Call it a feeling a hunch or paranoia,it fed foreboding to my brain, which must have been showing like a baby in a Mom's 3rd trimester.
She still had the calculating grin on her middle aged but pretty face when she went over the rules of the exam. "Rules"! I exclaimed in my by now delirious brain, what rules?
I thought there was only one rule, don't get caught cheating, but no not in this new world! She gave me a booklet and as I scanned the front page I saw words which almost made me puke up my lunch right there on the desk, MATH! I had to protest before she went any further and really humiliated me with a test involving numbers.
She calmly set me straight and explained that I was only doing the english portion of the booklet.
Now I could concentrate on the rules of the exam which still related to numbers and that was my other sworn enemy the evil cousin of Math; TIME!
I wanted to beg her to give me more than the allotted time considering I was old and of poor vision but she wouldn't have any of it.
Well at least it isn't math and writing is pretty much my strongest suit my anxiety started to peak again when she went over the pertinent sections. the section with the most questions was another math relative, ok it's a stretch, this was punctuation. I have a hard time with the more exotic bits of this evil sorcery. I write as I speak which does not often call for ; or: I even try to avoid ,'s while .'s I am good with. (see just used one right there) To discern when a ; or a : should be used is beyond my experience.
I steeled myself and vowed (in my head) to fight the good fight. I have to point out that I never believed in that phrase my motto being more, I will fuckin kill you anyway I can, none the less I had to display the deportment fitting an aged underachiever at the mercy of an educated and I am sure, sadistic Invigilator.
Time, small dots and curvy things were pitted against me as I went to the first section.
The first and second section were my prize I had vanquished and rot asunder time which, I'm told, waits for no man thus making me something more or less of one as I never wait for it.
The bout that seemed so lop sided because of two demons to be taken on at one time was before me. "You have 48 minutes to find zee punctuation errors of zese 55 leetle quevstions". (I like the accent thing)
My nonchalant air spewed out of me, I had been so far sucessful but could I do this? Less than a minute for each? I shook my head like a punched boxer maintaining consciencness, I'd be damned and not in school if I let this section get the better of me. I told me to ManUp!
I became as calm as a junkie gone deep, slowly I peeled the page back to reveal the first question and as I gazed at the first battle in this most difficult campaign horror overcame me!
I realized that my reading glasses that worked so well sitting at the computer with the screen a foot or more away from my face were not so good looking at tiny dots and curvy things on a page 8 inches away! I bobbed and squinted making sure that a dot was a dot and a comma a comma. In my head I was yelling "couldn't they have used a larger font? Why didn't I think of this and brought a magifyer, why didn't I buy an iPhone rather than the cheap shitty LG in my pocket?" Doom was at my doorstep and it wasn't going to wipe it's feet before taking me down! I had to be accurate, precise, make every pencil mark count.
Who would have thought that punctuations ally would be time! I was raging "Damn numbers,Damn them all to hell!"
I was sure that only 20 minutes had gone by when I was half way through and at the three quarter mark around question number 33 the Nazi er Librarian was at my side "Time is up for this section". I knew to plead or argue would be pointless and had to accept defeat in this campaign. I brushed it off turned the page to start the last section, the final conflict as it were. To spite time I did it as fast as I could and finished with 3 mins to spare. It went through my head only once, just once,"Go back and finish more questions in the previous section!", I couldn't do it. I called Patty over and submitted the booklet and my answer sheet. "Well you were quick on that last one."
My results like the results of most wars won't be known for sometime I just hope that this won't be the war of words which time helped win.
So I did it...the test, entrance exam, fuck up filter.
However you put it was a sweat creating, tremor causing nightmare for me.
Really it shouldn't be, my enlishg is passable although I throw the gramatic rule book out the window on occasion and my spelling is sometimes ifey but I have been in the same lingual stream for my whole life.
Perhaps it's because it's been 18 years since I have had the halls of higher education under my feet, well foot in my case. 8 of those using a computer with spell check...hmmm maybe Dad was right in saying that the puter is a demon feeding on our minds. Sorry Dad that is another blog.
So in I hobble with my crutches to the library of the local college and was immediately greeted by Patty, a very nice lady librarian a few years younger than me, with a smile she said "You must be Gordon, I will be invigilating your test".
It sounds like a new sex act that you are sure is not pleasant nor safe or a really gross surgical procedure on a part of you that you can't normally see.
With the same bright cheery air that the Nazi's would offer a shower for a concentration camp detainee she motioned to a room in the corner and said "Go in and get comfortable ya I vil be zere ein und moment. Ok she didn't have the accent but
I had a strong feeling that she knew the english entrance exam was harder than what I had experienced some 20 years earlier.
Call it a feeling a hunch or paranoia,it fed foreboding to my brain, which must have been showing like a baby in a Mom's 3rd trimester.
She still had the calculating grin on her middle aged but pretty face when she went over the rules of the exam. "Rules"! I exclaimed in my by now delirious brain, what rules?
I thought there was only one rule, don't get caught cheating, but no not in this new world! She gave me a booklet and as I scanned the front page I saw words which almost made me puke up my lunch right there on the desk, MATH! I had to protest before she went any further and really humiliated me with a test involving numbers.
She calmly set me straight and explained that I was only doing the english portion of the booklet.
Now I could concentrate on the rules of the exam which still related to numbers and that was my other sworn enemy the evil cousin of Math; TIME!
I wanted to beg her to give me more than the allotted time considering I was old and of poor vision but she wouldn't have any of it.
Well at least it isn't math and writing is pretty much my strongest suit my anxiety started to peak again when she went over the pertinent sections. the section with the most questions was another math relative, ok it's a stretch, this was punctuation. I have a hard time with the more exotic bits of this evil sorcery. I write as I speak which does not often call for ; or: I even try to avoid ,'s while .'s I am good with. (see just used one right there) To discern when a ; or a : should be used is beyond my experience.
I steeled myself and vowed (in my head) to fight the good fight. I have to point out that I never believed in that phrase my motto being more, I will fuckin kill you anyway I can, none the less I had to display the deportment fitting an aged underachiever at the mercy of an educated and I am sure, sadistic Invigilator.
Time, small dots and curvy things were pitted against me as I went to the first section.
The first and second section were my prize I had vanquished and rot asunder time which, I'm told, waits for no man thus making me something more or less of one as I never wait for it.
The bout that seemed so lop sided because of two demons to be taken on at one time was before me. "You have 48 minutes to find zee punctuation errors of zese 55 leetle quevstions". (I like the accent thing)
My nonchalant air spewed out of me, I had been so far sucessful but could I do this? Less than a minute for each? I shook my head like a punched boxer maintaining consciencness, I'd be damned and not in school if I let this section get the better of me. I told me to ManUp!
I became as calm as a junkie gone deep, slowly I peeled the page back to reveal the first question and as I gazed at the first battle in this most difficult campaign horror overcame me!
I realized that my reading glasses that worked so well sitting at the computer with the screen a foot or more away from my face were not so good looking at tiny dots and curvy things on a page 8 inches away! I bobbed and squinted making sure that a dot was a dot and a comma a comma. In my head I was yelling "couldn't they have used a larger font? Why didn't I think of this and brought a magifyer, why didn't I buy an iPhone rather than the cheap shitty LG in my pocket?" Doom was at my doorstep and it wasn't going to wipe it's feet before taking me down! I had to be accurate, precise, make every pencil mark count.
Who would have thought that punctuations ally would be time! I was raging "Damn numbers,Damn them all to hell!"
I was sure that only 20 minutes had gone by when I was half way through and at the three quarter mark around question number 33 the Nazi er Librarian was at my side "Time is up for this section". I knew to plead or argue would be pointless and had to accept defeat in this campaign. I brushed it off turned the page to start the last section, the final conflict as it were. To spite time I did it as fast as I could and finished with 3 mins to spare. It went through my head only once, just once,"Go back and finish more questions in the previous section!", I couldn't do it. I called Patty over and submitted the booklet and my answer sheet. "Well you were quick on that last one."
My results like the results of most wars won't be known for sometime I just hope that this won't be the war of words which time helped win.
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