Forums

Forums can be really interesting and sometimes helpful. Take SOD for example. After I was diagnosed with this disease I did the normal thing anyone does with a disease no one's ever heard of, I just Googled it. Sure enough there are plenty of sufferers out there willing to discuss the gory details of what they've been through and how "thrilled" they are to find that someone else out there has the same problem. They're thrilled because at last someone has sympathy for sufferers of the real disease instead of a well-meaning but in-the-dark doctor patting them on the back and sending them off to a psychiatrist.

As anyone who reads Anika's blog knows, yesterday morning she broke her self-imposed rule number one i.e. no blogging until after graduation. One can sympathise though, considering that she was obviously feeling somewhat nervous before sitting the same test that around 31 000 other students in our state have to sit to be considered for an entrance score for tertiary study. Out of interest I put "QCS test 2008" into Google and yes, there's a forum out there for year 12 students all rather nervous pre-testing.

The QCS test papers consist of: writing task, multiple choice 1 (both done on 2 Sep) and short response and multiple choice 2 (both done 3 Sep). On the forum there was a lot of discussion about the writing task. How do people approach it? How did they do in the practice tests? One soul came up with the rumour that the task this year would be to write about the theme of "traffic". I thought this was amusing because the contents of the writing task and other papers are so carefully guarded that it would be like breaking into Fort Knox to find out the information beforehand. Another soul said the best approach would be to work out a short story and memorise it before the test, then just somehow work the theme into the story for the actual test.

After the writing task on Tuesday Anika emailed from the school library. The theme was "circles". I went to the forum and saw comments such as: "Circles. Ugh. One year the theme was shapes, now we just get circles." I'll have to warn everyone when the writing task will get marked this year. I can imagine the loud sound of groans from wherever they mark it as each marker comes across several essays beginning: Traffic lights are circles. They are red, yellow and green.....

BTW, Anika found the tests generally quite okay, except the MCQ2 which she said was "very evil". Thanks for your prayers.