The Test.

We were supposed to meet for breakfast at 7:30 and leave to the testing site around 9:15ish. Sounds like a really workable deal right? well........

Traffic was wretched. I had to detour on 95th and drive halfway across town instead of just taking 435 to Metcalf. Fine, I called B~ and told him I was running late, no problem, I would be at LePeep's around 8 or so. Not too much off schedule. Still time to eat and relax before ... before... ~the test~.

No sooner did I get off the phone with B~ than S~ called me. She was stuck on 71 hwy south of the Triangle. Now, if you know KC traffic, it might (honestly) take you two hours to get through there after a wreck. It's that bad. She was stressing to the max. This delightful soul is from Southern Cal, so she really had that whole road rage feeling with her. Not that KC folk aren't road-ragers, but it was bad that day.

I got there around 8:15. S~ was still stuck. She finally arrived around 8:40. Fortunately we had ordered for her so she still got breakfast. Conversation was about anything except the test. We all kept saying we were ready, more than prepared, and just wanted it over. We lied. We were all nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

After we all finally found the testing site, I was the first in the door. The little twit that identified me as me, locked up my possessions, led me into a room lined with computers and pointed. I sat like an obedient child. He didn't tell me anything. Not when to start, not how to indicate I was finished, nothing. I was confused, but just started clicking through the questions on the screen, hoping I was doing it right. My test time was supposed to be at 10 a.m. It was only 9:45. Oh well, forgivness is better than permission right? I kept clicking.

The questions were not has hard as I expected. I had apparently studied the right material after all. Maybe? Since it was a timed test, I kept checking the little clock on the puter screen. Crap... was I going too fast? I had over two and a half hours and I was only about 45 minutes into it. OMG. I just knew this must be too easy.

Now is where my body really started messing with my mind. I got the yawns on a world-class scale. Then my eyes started watering. Then I started itching. Then I got the fidgets. Then my neck ached. Then my hand with the responsiblity of clicking stopped receiving blood flow. It felt like ice.

Everyone told me to take the first response that came to mine. Don't double guess. Don't review. Don't change answers. I still marked a few questions because I just didn't know. I did review them, however I only changed one answer.

As I stood to leave, S~ was leaving at the same time. I walked into the room where the uninformative twit was monitoring us and waited for my results. S~ got hers first and left the room. I retrieved my possessions and he handed me the piece of paper that would decide the rest of my life.

It was like I had had a stroke. Or I had been dropped on the Russian continent. I looked at this paper and could not comprehend anything. It looked like white paper with black crap all over it. I couldn't read at all. My mind was screaming, "What's this? What does it say? Where are the results? Oh shit I can't read any of this!".

Then I saw it. The word "PASS".

I walked out of the room and S~ was waiting on the rest of us. I just started bawling. I couldn't ask her if she passed. I wanted/didn't want to know. We three had so much riding on this with the Vegas Lomi Lomi trip coming in two weeks, jobs pending on passing NCE, and months of preparation.

She cried too as we hugged and then we saw B~ come out. The look on his face was enough to know his result.

So post-test has become really interesting. I have found it to be like coming down from an extremely traumatic event. And why wouldn't it be? We just weren't prepared for the mental side of national testing. School will tell you how do deal with test anxiety, but they never mention long term stuff. They don't teach you to be kind to yourself afterward... they don't tell you it takes days before your brain will really grip what you have just been through. They don't tell you that the days following are just as drama filled and the days preceding. They don't talk to you how you feel if you pass and they don't teach you how to deal with it if you fail.

Now I hope for my friends too all pass. I want them to know I understand the stress they are under. I have such a different perspective than I had a week ago.

The lesson I learned from all this? Self pressurization is the most horrible pressure imaginable. You can quit a pressurized job. You can walk away from a pressurized relationship. You can't leave yourself.

Be kind to yourself. It's more important than most anything else. Lesson learned.