Pace yourself!

I personally haven't really had a terrible time with test taking, however, I have taken some extremely difficult and rare tests that most people will never have to experience, luckily for them. I have taken the Defense Language Aptitude Battery (DLAB) test which is a test that aside from the questions being asked is in an entirely made up language. This test was issued to me by the U.S. Military to determine how well someone can decipher a foreign language. There was no preparation for this test for me, I simply agreed to take this 3 hour long mind splitting test and then took it. I have taken the Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT) which is a process that spans 3 days and is entirely in a foreign language testing oral, hearing and reading comprehension. 

To me, a major contributing reason as to why people struggle with tests is time management. I can say with confidence that keeping a solid pace is incredibly important. There will often be questions in your test taking career that stump you beyond belief and cause you to panic. Your frustration can build and cause you not to think clearly for the following questions. If possible, mark these questions for review and go back later. There is no shame nor harm in doing such a thing. Time management is even easier when you know how many questions will be on the test and how much time is allotted to take said test. Determine a realistic and adequate time goal for answering each question. If are able to keep a nice and steady pace and finish with 10-20 mins left on the clock you have ample time to go back and rethink those previous questions that you could not quite put your finger on. 

If anyone is interested in the DLAB, which I think is probably the most unique test I have ever taken, there will be a link below and you can take a small simplified practice test! (NOTE: There may be a few answers that are actually incorrect. My guess is that the multiple choices were moved around in their positions but the answer key was not adjusted.)

DLAB Practice Tests

Cite Your Sources

This semester I made the ambitious choice to take an 8-week English 101 class. This meant that we would be writing papers at a much quicker rate than a typical 16-week class. I saw this not as a burden but as an opportunity to deliver papers that were of a higher caliber than what I am use to. One of the biggest struggles of writing such papers I am my opinion is the need to cite information. There are many times that I can recall data or events that I have learned about but can not at the moment of writing remember the source or sources over lap from paper to paper. Learning how to properly use the citations and bibliography section in the references tab certainly decreased the amount of time that I spent on sources. 

I took advantage of the placeholder citations more times than I could even recall. This allowed me to quickly make a "note" that I should cite a particular piece of information without having to come to a dead stop in the writing process. In addition to this, being able to plug in all of my citations in one sitting after writing my entire papers and quickly go through and plug them all into their correct locations was a much better way of handling source material. Anyways if anyone is interested in reading a few of my papers below are links to two of my papers. Both of which I wrote for my English 101 class. 

Interstellar Impact On Climate Change - An analysis of the film Interstellar and its take on climate change.

This Revolution Will Be Televised - An argument paper based around socialism and the Black Panther Party