Closed Book Trauma

After 5 sleepless nights and frenzy, I realised professional certificates aren't fun to take haha. My last one was 3-4 years ago with EC-Council but I had lots of time to study after the course ended. Plus the sample questions were plentiful.

Comparatively, I had only 5 days to study after the course ended and little samples could be found. It was afterall a not so popular and hence not much market value SAP certificate. There were of course more well known certificates from SAP but somehow I could never decide what I want.

It was precisely my indecision that make me refuse to take any during my times with SS. I hate to be bonded for something I'm not even sure I like - specialisation. That seems to fixate me to a specific SAP path e.g. MM. But I'm surprised having claimed I don't want to go into this line, or take a cert from it, I had actually schemed to get into this course haha. At the expense of angering pple, and at the expense of my health.

I always believe one should sleep before a paper to 'save' and 'process' the knowledge. But on that night itself, I still had 3 major chapters untouched (2 were covered in class though). And my colleague's batch job was failing thus I had to help her debug. I ended up with only an hour rest and the feeling that I think I aged tremendously overnight haha.

But I think what left me the deepest impression should be the exam itself. 2.5 years of open book experience has conditioned me to believe I can find the answer in those brought-in materials. And when none is available, every question you do, you actually question yourself if it is right. Out of 80 questions and 300 marks (the mcqs choices are in a t/f format that every choice you make matters), I probably was only certain for one-third of the question. And ample time to recheck only erodes my confidence in those I was previously confident of. At one point I had to tell myself at most retake and that it is not a big deal. I started berating myself that I should have study harder months ago, except I had been loafing around. Thus this is my own doing.

Refusing to leave early, I watched as the timer counts down. Then the screen change and my results were shown. I passed. And I forgot all the questions I had just attempted. I guess I can only say closed book exam can really see how confident and well prepared one is for an exam.

P/s: and I still can't figure out why I had subjected myself to such mental torture because as of now, I am unable to deliver my stated tasks. Darnz! It is making me no mood to train for my marathon either (and I already don't have much motivation to begin with)

Pp/s: and I haven't been catching up with the H1N1 news. Somehow it reminded me of the SARS days memories; making my brain in over drive mode.

Conclusion? Too much studying can fry one brain and make her think of useless stuff. Probably fear. In need of some inner peace with oneself.

Written and posted via BB, currently a plaything as email migration is in process. Which means uncontactable during the weekend. Yipee!