Memoirs of an Amnesiac

As a student some years back, I had never really liked tests, whether they are assigned or those kinds that leave you cursing your teachers (the pop quizzes) nor those periodical tests. At a younger age, I would stay up all night, thinking about the many pages and fretting about how to let them stay in my ever-unusually absent mind. I hated the way my Social Studies quizzes were constructed. They always made me memorize so many dates and events. Back then, I never really liked Social Studies, unlike now when I learned there are actually so many interesting things about it that are just marred by the many dates of events that even, perhaps, my teachers are not able to memorize.

I remembered one day when I was really all so exhausted that I sat there in the middle of the room at the front row (my usual spot), wondering how it would be if I would give my own test. Oh, I'm sure my students would not have to agonize over waves of dates and events! Back then, in my young mind, I thought, what really is there about testing? Why is it so important that people would have to spend long hours, fight off temptations to open their computers, spend more time alone in their rooms, probably go to a classmate's house just to study there?

I had not realized its importance until I myself was ushered into making my own test. It is not like just putting icing on a cake and never a walk in the clouds. You need to think about so many things yet decide only ON WHAT MATTERS MOST. First, you have to test the waters. Many things have to be considered. How many of those items on your test have your students really grasped? Then you can gauge which ones to leave out or include. Next, you have to vary the test. You just can't have all essay type tests (besides, they take a while to check). Like a student, you would love to see variations. (Nature abhors sameness.) So many things have to be reconsidered. And so I figured, I was so naive back then when I said my students would have a great time taking my tests.

Taking tests or being subjected to one is never really easy. It takes a great deal of discernment as well as a huge amount of certainty for you to be able to ace your test. This has somewhat paralleled our very own lives. Each of us, every day are subjected to tests. Though some of them are not paper-and-pencil types but like real tests, they truly make us learn things albeit they don't have to reflect our grades.

In the classroom called life, we are tested each day. And the real scores of our tests are really reflected when you get to surpass them, despite everything else. You will never really learn about self-control until you yourself are on the verge of losing it. You won't get to appreciate success until you lose. Integrity will finally reach its finals when you decide not to take that bribe money (which you badly needed), even when your son is at the ICU fighting off his life. Loving will never be graded according to how you gave it especially when it is reciprocated but when you give even when there is no hope of ever receiving it.

These are true tests. And not many of us pass them with flying colors.