Lea & Liz: Primary week in Florida
January 21st, 2008
Oh my gosh, it is really here…. the primary in FLORIDA? ugh, I am
not good at voting and I finally figured out why. It has to do with my
test taking competencies (or my lack of those skills)…
You see, the election (the big one next november) is like a true false
test. You only pick one side out of two sides. TRUE or FALSE. I was
never good at true/false tests…. yes, there is that sense that you
have a 50% chance of getting it right, but I always lingered on some
questions like “is this really really true all of the time or only in
months that have a ‘R’ in them?” and “isn’t that just a tiny bit false
with some truth on the sides to decorate it?”
And the primaries are like a multiple choice test. and again… not my
strongest test taking skill area. “Umm, I like A but only if you mix
in a bit of B, take C totally out of the equation, and use D as your
back up in case of power failure” or “None of the above, but I will
pick a bit from each answer and make a brand new E”. And if I settled
on one answer, I always looked back over all the choices and thought
about how it might have really been one of those and what was I
missing out on. Yeah, you did not want to be sitting next to me during
the S.A.T. Saturday.
The election should be one long essay (bloggers must have been the
kids in school that LOVED essay tests). You can even give me a word
limit (and really, you should give me a word limit because without
it… I shudder to think…) I should get to write all the things I
want and all the things I don’t want in a president and then suddenly
that perfect person would appear and I could pencil in the little oval
thing next to his name. Now that would be some election reform.
Of course, who wants to read all those essays?
Entry Filed under: Uncategorized
2 Comments Add your own
1. Liz | January 21st, 2008 at 9:55 am
Wow, Lea. I had never thought of it that way, but I think you may have just nailed what makes electoral politics so challenging.
Elections really are essays if done correctly, with us talking and thinking and talking more about all the endless complexities we’re being asked to decide about - even when they are ridiculously oversimplified as they are in politics, they’re ridiculously complicated.
Then, on election day, it’s like trying to funnel the Atlantic ocean through a thimble: TRUE or FALSE.
Apparently all this time you were thinking you weren’t good at test-taking, the truth is you are quite good at it. It’s just the limitations of the test…
2. lea | January 21st, 2008 at 11:05 am
tell that to Harvard who would not even consider me as a possible admission to their fine university due to my test scores…
see it wasn’t the test, it was the limitations of the test.
oh, my gosh, i am just imagining how obnoxious i would be if i had gone to harvard. you wouldn’t even want to know me. good thing there were those test limitations…
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed