Almost a pig's ear

[bibblebub]

Please indulge me posting this but I have no-one else to tell.

On Monday I sat the last of the exams for the ECDL (computer) qualification but several days earlier a full-blown cold had broken out, and so I decided to zonk out on cold relief capsules and throat lozenges to minimize the coughs and sniffles; it was mostly about following general instructions so shouldn't be a problem.

After 20 mins of the 1 hour permitted I was drifting along doing ok when suddenly the instructions required something impossible, which is when the penny dropped - I'd been creating a Word document when all along I should have been making a Powerpoint presentation (2 completely different programs).

Panic - what should I do? Persevere with Word to end up with something (with hindsight that would have earned no marks at all but I wasn't thinking clearly)? Start afresh with Powerpoint even though there was only 35 of the 60 minutes left? Or just get up and walk out, and hope to be able to resit the exam? I was in a very indecisive frame of mind because of the medication that it took what seemed like 5 mins to make up my mind.

I very nearly quit but decided to start anew, my hands shaking so much with stress during the rest of the time that the sound of the mouse rattling on the desk must have been disturbing to other people in the room. And I got to the end of the exam with just seconds to spare.

I've just got the result and I'm feeling quite chuffed - 92%, plus 100% in the 12 multiple-choice questions that accompanied it (the pass mark is 75%). Hurrah, no resits required.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, hope it wasn't too much of a waste of your time.

[mazie]

Excellent bibblebub. a great achievement. I hope you're felling very proud of yourself (you should) xx

[society]

Congratulations!!!

I would have done exactly like you had and start afresh with Powerpoint. I'm well pleased for you.

[mccfluff]

congrats

[bibblebub]

Thank you all very much.

I always feel embarrassed posting something like this but there are times when you need to tell someone.

[mazie]

you shouldn't feel embarrassed it's great to share the good news as well as the not so good. I think I would be shouting it from the tree tops if it was me (highly unlikely as that is)

[mike11111]

I know only too well the feeling. It's an absolute b****r when you think you are doing so well then realise you have dropped an almighty clanger. This happened to me 15 years ago when I was sitting a paper for a law degree. The questions were tailor-made for me and I had completed three answers out of four in under half the time allowed which allowed me more than ample time to answer the fourth and most time-consuming question. I had already written two pages and was moving on to the next part of my answer, for which I had to refer back to the text of the scenario in the question. It was then that I realised that i had overlooked a vital sentence and had been writing for an hour about the wrong section of the relevant Act. I had to strike out my answer and start again with thirty minutes to go instead of the ninety I had allowed myself. I just made it and got good marks, but it reinforced the old instruction - Read the question thoroughly!

[bibblebub]

What threw me with this exam was that you had to use the text contained in a Word document as the basis for creating the presentation from scratch, and so being relatively braindead at the time once I opened the doc, I just carried on editing it (that was all that was required in the mocks).

And well done mike11111 (even though it's 15 years ago).