NCAE: Survived!

Last Wednesday, August 26, we, the fourth year students, had taken the National Career Assessment Examination. And finally, we survived it and that dreadful exam ended!

Well, it wasn't the actual exam that was dreadful. It was pretty easy, actually (yabang!). But we peed blood and blades during the preparation for it.

Weeks before the test, our normal classes were shifted to review classes for the NCAE. I think we started the review as soon as the First Monthly exam was over. Our schedule was changed, as well as some of our teachers.

Because we're kinda late in lessons and haven't really taken everything we need to take up, there are so many lessons we tackled during the review, especially in Math. It was as if the teachers are trying to put in every information that they can in our mind with that little time, so effect was not very successful.

Well, that was in my case. I did absorb information in other subjects, but Math is a different case. There are a lot of theorems and formulae to be memorized, and it was taught in such a fast pace. It somewhat made me dizzy.

Plus, some teachers--who were probably lazy to teach lessons--just gave us questionnaires to be answer and not teaching at all.

The lessons we had taken were the ones that appeared in First Quarterly exams. And every section in fourth year level took the same exams. And because we had different teachers during the review, different teaching styles and abilities, of course some sections and students weren't too lucky at all.

And probably our section was one of those "unlucky ones". The review classes just got me dizzy and confused and they were full of alien-ish things. Especially and most especially Mathematics.

I don't wanna think about the First Quarterly exam. Because of the fact that I didn't review for it and the fact that some of the lessons were new to me, I really peed blood and blades.

So, I was fortunately not late at the day of NCAE. I was late during the first and second dry-run, 'ya know, and I was told to make a five-page narrative report to state the reason why I was late during the second dry-run. Mou.

The dry-runs means nothing to me. Well, maybe not really "nothing", but it was quite insignificant to me. Bahala na. I didn't care about it that much. I didn't review for it too.

But at the day of our NCAE, before the test started, at the time we lined up in the quadrangle, it was then that I feel excited about it. And a little anxious too. I got excited and a bit anxious for it's outcome, in what score I will get. Because it would be another step in my way to college.

The actual NCAE wasn't that bad, really. Even Math wasn't too hard. Well, if I was given two hours for the Math, I will probably get a fair score. Maybe 40 or so over 60 items. (My right answers in the dry-runs were barely above the half of the number of items, btw. 8D)

They say Science was hard. Even harder than Math, according to my classmates. Well, it wasn't really awful for me. The questions were mostly "situation" types, mostly about scientific method and general science. If I were to choose between an examination like that and an exam which contains mostly Chemistry, I would choose the first. I don't know much about Chem, 'ya know, all thanks our Chem teacher back in third year.

It was the English that I was anxious about. I need to score high on that because my course would be an English-related course, and I'm quite bothered with it. Not that is it that hard, but it wasn't too eay either. Some questions kinda confused me, too.

They say some school asks for the results of the NCAE, some does not. But whatever kind of school I get into, whether they ask for the NCAE result as a requirement or not, I wished that mine will be okay. Because I want to take a course that I really like, a course that fits me right.

Good luck to us fourth years! We can do it! Ganbatte!~