Mat

I took my written test for Driver’s Ed today. It was… interesting.

The first thing that I had to do was take a practice test, which was fifty questions that were all multiple choice. They gave me a blank test, as well as one with the answers circled by hand so I could compare when I was done. The idea here is that if I did bad on the practice test, I wouldn’t have to waste my one free attempt on the test, cause if I fail the retake costs money.

I thought it was pretty easy, but when I compared with their answer sheet I ran across five or six questions where I flat-out disagreed with the answer sheet. Things that I knew were right but the answer sheet said otherwise. Some I wasn’t sure, like I thought I was right but it was realistic that maybe I misremembered, but some I knew without a doubt that the answer sheet was wrong and that made me pretty nervous. Technically I don’t think the score I got on the practice test was good enough to qualify for the real one but because I was unsure about the answer sheet as a whole I just went along and took the real one anyway.

The real test was forty multiple choice questions, taken from the same bank as the practice test. I could miss a maximum of eight and still pass. As I took it I found that the same five or six questions that I was unsure about because of the practice test were on the real one as well. Which was not really fun for me to decide what to do

I opted to lean towards trusting the practice test answer sheet on the ones I thought maybe it was right, while sticking to what I knew was right for the others. I felt alright about it when I turned it in. The instructor grades it right then and there, so I watched her tick off the incorrect answers, and as she checked closer to forty the incorrect answers grew closer to eight.

I, officially, got eight wrong. Which is a pass. Barely.

But then I mentioned that I thought some of the questions on the practice test were wrong, so the instructor looked it over. And yep, most of the ones I was unsure about were in fact marked incorrectly on the practice test answer sheet, making my score closer to 36/40. Which, since I passed anyway, doesn’t really matter but it made me wonder how many other people ‘failed’ the test because they trusted the sheet over their own judgement and memory. The instructor ripped the answer sheet in front of me and promised to look over the other ones, but it was clear that the answer sheet had been in use for awhile. So yeah, I’m fairly annoyed at the system  Like, you had one job.

But I passed. Now just the driving drive test…

(Sorry for the long and dramatic SU, but I thought this was worth a share )