My UPCAT ordeal
Saturday, August 1, 2009 @ 3:34 PM
August 1, 2009. College of Arts and Letter building. 6:30 am. Room 301.This day's probably the most stressful day of my life. I started my day, as usual. Forced my butt off to bed, showered and ate my typical breakfast meal. 4:45 am came (Yes. I woke up really early.) and I went up to wake my dad. After his coffee, we jumped in our car. Then suddenly the rain poured when we reached Roosevelt so we went back to get my umbrella.
Traffic inside UP was surprisingly smooth (or maybe it's just that we arrived there at 5:30). We immediately got a parking slot in front of the building. My dad told me to check on the applicants (where they are and what they are doing) and so I did. I saw the applicants in line in front of the entrance. I told my dad about this and he said to just stay inside the car and wait. He demanded that I sleep. Of course, I can't.
So while waiting, I watch the cars as they pass by the filled roads of UP and the anxious, nervous and anticipating faces of test-takers. Then, I suddenly saw a girl who really looks familiar. It's ate Kaye! (Mia's yaya.) Then, I saw Mia. (We're on the same building...and room.) So, I rolled down the car window to get her attention. We were both shocked. Haha. We both lined up but we were two seats away. Aww.
6:30. Test-takers, including myself, are arranged in all testing centers in CAL. There were two proctors in the room. One gave out instructions while the other one acted as a "look-out". The room was not air-conditioned. What makes it worse were the electric fans that were like 5 meters above me. It's a good thing, though, that the weather was cooperative. (Thank you, God!)
The first test was language proficiency. Quite fair. Although, arranging sentences to form a cohesive paragraph was really time-consuming. It lasted for 50 minutes.
Second was science. Oh, God. Thank you for Miss Audrey Gineta! After 50 minutes, the proctor instructed us to stop writing and to stand. All of us were dumb-founded by such request, but all of us responded. Then she told us to stretch. Hahaha. Mia and I were doing yoga poses just to ruin the serious moods of the others and to makes us calm as well. (By the progression of my story, you might think that I was modest in taking the UPCAT. Advise: read on.)
Then came the freaky math sub-test. First I thought that I can finish it since it was only 60 items and time alloted for that sub-test was 1 hour and 30 minutes. Then again, I was being ridiculously judgemental. Some parts are about math basics. What was really hard was the geometry part (I totally flunked Geomtery last year.) Another problem came, my stomach began to grumble. My mind was debating if I'll just continue answering to save time or to eat to satisfy my stomach. So I had to gamble. I ate while solving arithmetic and geometric progressions. I skipped 25% of that part because answers in my computations were not included in the choices. Oh crap! Again, I have to gamble. I threw darts in my answer sheet just to have an answer.
Last part was reading comprehension. It was fine. I took the answer-if-you-have-extra-time part too. While taking the test, all I think about is the freedom that I'll have after the UPCAT.
1 hour and 10 minutes was up and the UPCAT's finally done. That was my UPCAT experience.