dearhabermas  

Fwd: Re: Special person

Jeanne Curran
Sun, 21 Apr 2002 14:21:17 -0700

Helen, how wonderful that Lisa's message got you to respond. 

Everyone: This is one of the reasons I'm sending these out to all of you.  Different stimuli work for different people.

Graduate tests: Yes, I have lots of material on the graduate tests, and lots of it depends on fairly simple, fairly inexpensive material.  Buy one of the Barron's or other work books in a massive book store, like Wordstar.  Then practice taking the tests, even without studying, while you're watching TV, or fussing at your kids, or arguing with your spouse or live-in, or with your parents,etc.  In other words,  make sure this isn't an ideal study situation with peace and quiet and concentration.
        The objective of this study is to get used to the kind of conditions under which you will take the test. There will be lots and lots (maybe hundreds) of very nervous people taking the test with you.  They will scrape their chairs, shuffle their feet, chew gum (noisily, some of them) ,  breathe noisily, sniffle, spill a coke they smuggled in, whatever.  But they will annoy you.  You won't be alone, and it won't be comfortingly quiet and non-distracting. That's the structural context you're trying to recreate and get used to.  Best way I know to do that is to work in the midst of family and friends.  Trust me, they'll find ways to distract you. If you can answer those miserable questions in the midst of that, you'll be OK on the test.

The second thing is to remember why you're taking the test: to mark the answers they think are right!  Use a blank piece of paper, and mark the answer to each question in one of the test sections.  Then turn immediately to the answers (NEVER BUY A TEST PREPARATION BOOK THAT DOESN'T HAVE THE ANSWERS, AND THE EXPLANATION FOR WHY THOSE ARE THE CORRECT ANSWERS, AND PREFERABLY WHY THE OTHER ANSWERS WERE JUDGED NOT CORRECT.)  Read carefully the answers to all the choices (these are multiple choice tests, folks), AND figure out why they picked the answer they did.  Not whether you picked the answer that they did, but why they picked the answer they did.  They're the ones who make up the test.  You have to learn to figure out how THEY think!  If you do this over and over with as many test sections as you have time for, in the midst of family and friend activities, you'll be OK on the test. The reason I use a blank sheet of paper is so I can do the section over and over without having the book itself marked up.  One book should give you plenty of material for all the practice you have time for!

Hope this helps!
love and peace, jeanne




From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 23:28:04 EDT
Subject: Re: Special person
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
X-Mailer: AOL 4.0 for Windows sub 114

Hi Jeanne
I did read your Special Person email and of course I am encourage to take
time and send you a response.  There is so much going on. I graduate this
semester and I am planning to submit an application to the MFT Master
program.  But I will have to wait a year because I missed the deadline.  I
intend on taking the GRE test.  I took a mock test.  I will find out my score
on Friday.  I do know I need about 12 more years of education to do really
well on that test.  I am open to any and all suggestions on how to prep for
the real test.  I know this test was design to eliminate the other.  I just
don't intend to be the other, this time                

                                                    Love & Peace               
                                                    Helen