examinations

First of all, my feet were clearly not accustomed to wearing something this quaint after months of donning leather boots. I was teetering while walking over inclined pathways because of fear that I might accidentally slip. It was like walking with flip flops, whose thong was on the brink of breaking. Not that I don’t love these Cervantes but I might just leave them in the office for future use, or if the occasion calls for it and I no longer have any other choice. I also noticed that three out of the four corners of my J. Peterman bag had sustained permanent damage, with the delicately stretched out leather being eventually worn. I don’t know how they made the old U.S. postal service’s bags, but hopefully they suffer the same problem as mine. LOL

When Monette was in the office yesterday, we were exchanging notes and tips regarding the exam I’m taking less than a month from now. From the format up to what will probably be the most tasking part, we also touched upon the management portion. She mentioned about this certain ‘effect’, named after a Greek mythology-related name. The name ‘Prometheus’ immediately came up but ‘Prometheus effect’ made no sense at all. Somebody has been watching too much Fassbender recently — no question on that! A quick Google with the search string ‘management concept greek god effect‘ yielded this: the Pygmalion effect. Close guess, though, as they both share the letters P, O and M. =D

The Pygmalion effect, or the Rosenthal effect (name after Robert Rosenthal) is a theory purporting that people will behave or act in the same way others expect them to. In some way, it is all about labels and the effect of such positive labels on how a person perceives himself. Last July, I went on thinking over how I honestly perceive myself and that overwhelming feeling of mediocrity in that precarious pre-comprehensive examination phase. Well, I passed my exams and I was very happy about it, but at times, I still have that nagging feeling of being undeserving. Come to think of it, I always get this feeling whenever I’m faced with a seemingly daunting task and the almost-year long selection process will surely be an arduous wait. But, hey, I am all for taking risks this year, right? What if I fail. There’s always next year but still, NAKAKAHIYANG BUMAGSAK. O_O

Of course, there’s no pressure and people around me never gave any overt pronouncement of expectations. But reading between the lines (as it is my eternal flaw), I give new meanings and interpretations to what people say to me. I honestly view words of encouragement as a form of pressure, and the truth of the matter is, I create my own problems. Humility aside, among the three of us kids, I was the one always in the receiving end of my parents’ compliments and expectations. I will not go into full detail but needless to say, I was eventually expected to fend for myself as I’m ideally the most self-sufficient. So amidst the feeling of mediocrity I perpetually have, I always do my best to live up to the expectations of the people around me because those were expected of me. A win-win situation, now that I look at it, but for how long can I sustain this?

Back to that ‘giving new meaning’ tendency of mine, I suddenly recall last week when I took a sort-of diagnostic exam for English to see where I need most work and improvement for reviewing. I took a 370-question exam for a timed hour and a half (I finished 15 minutes short of the timer), and I was able to get 324 correct answers. Now, the exam needed an 80 percent grade to qualify, maybe for each part, and I got about 87.50 percent. Of course, it will NEVER be the same set of questions but at least I now have an understanding where to start. But as I was looking over my wrong answers, it was funny/ridiculous how I got all correct answers for the ‘Reading Comprehension’ part, except that the incorrect ones were the give-the-appropriate-title questions — all of them were wrong. It was infuriating because I can’t understand why, as I was under the impression that I was giving an apt title, but the answer key ‘thought’ otherwise. Talk about giving new meaning to what I have read.

I have exactly twenty five days before that dreaded day — I just need to go past that first hurdle. I don’t even write nor indicate any tags pertaining to the exams because I don’t want to be searchable and lead people into clicking these entries. What if I fail? I shudder just thinking about it. Baby steps, baby steps. Meanwhile, I also submitted my CV to an organization looking for volunteers and hopefully I get at least a part-time participation in their activities. That’s the silver lining I was hoping for.