It's over! (the test, not the divorce)

My exam is over! It is was my last exam of the pre-clinical portion of medical school, and I felt amazing as I walked away from it. Trekking to my car, I thought about how fast these first 2 years have gone. It feels like just last week I was looking at my first perfectly normal pathology lab slide and thinking, "I don't know, looks like a tumor to me."

We normally take our exams as a class in huge lecture halls. We have to be there 15 minutes before the exam starts so that Carol, Queen of the Test Nazis can yell at us about how important it is to be there 15 minutes before the exam. It is important, because she has a full 15 minutes of screaming to do before we can start. After the verbal thrashing, she reads this very long, very official statement that basically translates to, "If you little bastards cheat on this test, I'm going to hang you up by your toenails and beat you and then let the 1st years practice physical exams on your bruised and broken asses." In the middle of this statement, she says something about no cell phones or pagers being allowed in the testing room and then stops, puts her paper down, and waits to see if anyone has any banned electronic devices they want to pull out of their pants and fork over to a proctor.

After all this, just after we've forgotten everything we've studied for the past month, she gives us permission to write our names on our answer sheets (do this without permission and you just bought yourself another 2.5 minutes of yelling) and start the damn exam.

Today, though, I took the exam separate from the rest of the class because I had a court appointment during tomorrow's scheduled exam time. (More on the had later.) I took the exam in the campus testing center, a high-security compound where they often administer standardized national exams. They wouldn't even let me take my car keys with me into the testing room. I had to lock them in a locker and then hand the locker key to a proctor. I was understandably bummed--all that time I spent copying a months worth of notes onto my keys completely wasted.

The testing room has separate stations for each test-taker. This morning, I was the only one. A sign on the door warns you that your every move is being audio and video recorded, and there's a camera over every station. Proctors sit behind mirrored glass watching you, both on the monitors and in the flesh.

I sat down in my assigned station. I thought that since I was the only one there, I should get to choose my station, but no such luck. (Damn Test Nazi.) The Nazi stood over my shoulder and read the whole, "If you, little bastard, cheat on this test..." statement. She even stopped at the banned electronics portion, lowered her paper, and looked at me, waiting to see if I was going to pull a cell phone out of my ass. At this point, I couldn't help it--I started laughing. It all just seemed so asinine. Who the hell could cheat in here? The laughing confused her, but we pressed on. She gave me permission to write my name on my answer sheet. I nearly misspelled my last name. (Apparently, I don't work well under pressure.) She then turned my test face down in front of me and said, "Ready, go!" I was a little slow on the start because I was trying to suppress the laughter and kegal myself out of peeing my pants.

I started the test and quickly forgot I was being watched. I got to a particularly annoying question and said, "What the fu--?" I stopped myself just before the "ck" and looked up at the camera to whisper, "Sorry, protor lady." Normally, I wouldn't feel so bad, but some of these proctors are old. I mean really old. Like volunteer for the board of elections, get excited about jury duty, work as part-time Walmart greeter old. I generally try not to use the really potent curse words around the elderly. You know, out of respect.

All that said, the exam went just fine. And I was really glad to be done!


Finally, explaining that "I had a court appointment" part. I heard from the lawyer man this afternoon. He had just received notice of a last minute continuance filed by Ex's attorney. I was really pissed. I was really looking forward to being divorced this time tomorrow. I talked to lawyer man, though, and we came up with a plan of attack to get this whole thing over with sooner rather than later.

So, all that emotional upheaval this weekend for nothing? Yeah. Except, that I actually feel much better about my ability to handle all of this now. I'll revisit all of your amazingly supportive words and kind thoughts before I go to court June 20th. In the meantime, I'm reminding myself to let go of the things I can't control and focus on what I can.

All in all, this was a pretty great day for me. How was yours?