Most all children love to hate tests. When the government officially allowed them 'not to worry about any tests', formative or summative, till they reached the ninth standard, they would have, i am sure, voted en masse for the ruling party, if they were at all allowed the right!!! Well, none could reduce the voting age to that low a 'standard', so democracy managed to pass with its own unique colours!
As children turn adults, who would have, one would think, happily left tests back-n-away in the long lost student days, suddenly, for them, there is this desparate urge for tests. Everywhere, online, in newspapers, in magazines, there are all sorts of tests, sudoku, different word power tests, and most important of all, the personality tests.
'Are you an introvert?', 'What kind of friends do you like?' umpteen such questions about your very own self get answered if you are game for the quiz that follows/accompanies. In my opinion, these 'tests' are like the 'daily horoscope' in the newspaper or on the T.V. Equally applicable to everybody in a very democratic way!
They are absolute fun, believe me! Partially, every item from every category applies to each and everyone. Once i was asked to answer one such never-ending longish test. Since I was helping this young lady with her Ph.D. thesis, and she seemed highly impressed with my tasteful interpretations of the basic texts and the critical paradigm i had suggested, i agreed to humour her, and took the test.
Well, every question in that personality test had four answers, and at least three, if not all, seemed absolutely applicable! If i were to thus follow up the test these three or four different ways (she assured me most comfortingly that it was okay to take the test any number of times, and with varied answers each time!), I would have ended up being gladioli, rose, and many such fab flowers. Oh, yes, per answer, you had to assign a certain mark to yourself, and accordingly, as per the sum total, you would get a flower assigned to your self which would be explained further!
Well, i had no intention whatsoever to be a bouquet of selfhoods. So, with a happy sigh, i left the test (and my inner self) alone even when my first time (as sincere as is possible given the choices) answers just reduced to me to a violet or some such non-glamorous, flower by the mossy stone (as Wordsworth would put it), while she told me with quite some pride that she had ended up as an orchid, or some such rarest of the rare flower!
No harm meant, but i think even with these tests, it is not a real test of your intelligence or inner self. Exam after all! You should learn how to to t(r)ick the right answer. Yet people spend hours on such tests whose answers you can go on guessing easier than a typical simplistic MCQ! Practice does it. Two or three tests tops, and you can comfortably arrive at the 'right', the 'propah', the 'correct' answer. So here, too, practice makes man perfect which is the real 'result' of each and every test after all!
All sorts of such tests are there, believe me! Which one picture do you like, the guffawing donkey, the smiling zebra or the giggling monkey? Accordingly, your inner animal would get defined! Well, the very idea gave me such a side-splitting laugh that Tashu, our amused doggie, looked at me most suspiciously! Tests, and exams, of all sorts are crazy, and to be avoided as much as possible, in brief!
Pratima@ Resist the stress of the test, do your best, and forget the rest, and thus would you get the results best!
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