On Tuesday, the MEE portion of the exam, the day started early and ended rather late. It took forever to get into the building because all the laptop users had to go in first, and at the end of the day it took forever to be released because of the sheer number of laptop users. There were orange "distress" flags popping up at the end of the exam as people couldn't get their USB backups to work - glad I decided to write. In hindsight it did make things a lot easier (the graders may feel differently about that).
The proctors were quite strict about what could be brought into the exam room - so for the sake of making things easy on yourself, follow the directions and don't bring something in that the instructions explicitly tell you to leave at home.
When it came time to actually open the test and get started I dove right in. Trying to get your mind to work can be a challenge, but all you can really do is rely on what you did to prepare and hope that, in the end, it's enough.
At the end of the day, I thought I would be a nervous wreck. Normally when exams come around, my stomach starts doing hula hoops around my knees, but for this, it didn't happen. I was calm when the morning session was done, and again when we left for the day. Very odd for me - and I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. Only time will tell.
As far as the actual writing went, my hand cramped up more times than I care to count. If I was ambidextrous, my hand would've thanked me ... but I can't even hold a spoon in my other hand let around write legibly with it ... heck, I don't even know if my writing was legible with my writing hand. Some of my writing was rushed and I had to go back through and cross out words and print them out because I knew there was no way anyone could actually read my words. I just hope the rest isn't as bad ... it's my own writing, so I can generally make it out ... just have to wait and see. On a side note, the pens with the nice rubberized grips work quite well at attempting to help with the hand cramping. If I were using any other pen without those grips, I think I would've lost a few digits. My hand also got very sweaty, something that I wish I could've prevented. Nerves working their way through - and it did make holding onto the pen rather interesting during the last parts of each session.
Some of the essays took a short time, others longer and the MPT - well I guess it depends on how well you planned it out before putting pen to paper. I think that I may have rushed things - as evidenced by the fact that I finished 40 minutes early on both the morning and afternoon sessions. There is nothing more unnerving than being done and having to sit for the remainder of the exam while everyone else is still writing and there is nothing more that you can think to even add to your responses. Will it hold up - well, I guess we'll find out in October.
Advice - don't stress out about it. It will make the day miserable for you - just go in there knowing that you are as prepared as you are going to be for the test on that day. And when you are done, leave it in the room. Don't take it home, don't dwell on what you could've done differently because there is NOTHING that you can do about it. Will I change my mind if I have to retake it, probably not. I don't wish having to do this more than once on anyone, but you know what - sometimes shit happens and you just have to deal with it.
Now, if only you could bring in personal cooling devices, that would be something.
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