What is done, is done.

I took the Earth Science Content Specialty Test (CST) yesterday.

The CST is the test that you must pass in order to teach in your subject area and yesterday's exam was the only one that will give me a passing score before the school year starts, which means if I didn't pass, I don't get to teach until I can pass the test again, in December.

While I don't think that I aced it, by any means, I think that the immersion program work and the loads of studying I have done on my own payed off. Similar to what Justin says about "P equals M.D." in terms of medical school classes, in my case, I only need that 220/300 score to make it. Anything above 220 is just gravy.

The testing ordeal itself was a bit of a nightmare-- I was home by midnight the night before, ready for my six hours sleep before waking up to trek to Coney Island for the exam. Then, just as I was getting ready for bed, I realized I had forgotten to print out my exam ticket needed to get in to the test. No problem, I thought, I'll just use my roommate's printer, easy.

I have never seen a printer go so bananas before. From the instant I turned it on, before I'd even told it to print anything, it began sucking in every piece of paper in her paper tray, diligently printing one line of wingdings on each page before spitting it out. Oh my God, is this really happening?

I tried turning it off, unplugging it, etc, and every time I hit that power on switch, the same madness.

I live in Sunset Park, where there are no FedEx Kinkos around (hell, I don't think I have seen a Kinkos since I left Seattle), so I began to panic. I texted a ton of my classmates to see if they could print it for me, and all of them were either taking the test in Manhattan or were already asleep, which is exactly where I wanted to be.

In the end, I took the train to Jac's house, where she let me use the printer, and then crashed out for my official 3.5 hours sleep I got by the time it was all said and done. I know that NYC has public transit that gets you almost anywhere, yadda yadda, but at night, it takes FOREVER. Its normally about a 35 minute trip for me to get to her house (take the D two stops, walk to the G, take that three stops) but Friday night, it was about 1.25 hours. Ugh.

Yesterday after the test I came home and passed out for about two hours before getting up and playing a 7s tournament on the lower west side of Manhattan. My team didn't win, but I had fun anyway. One of the best games we played was against the New York Women's 7s side. The NY Women are the Premier Div 1 team here in NYC. That means that they're really, really good. They routinely make it to the top three in nationals. There was no Premier bracket in this 7s tournament, so they brought their A side to the "Social" bracket, which was where my team was playing. We played the NY Women's B side at Rockaway last month and beat them, but these A side women were totally different. Not only that, but I was playing with the Lions B team, which was even more of a skill-level deficit. I am happy to say that despite all of this being stacked against us, we only were beaten 5 tries to 1. For a team that had such a skill level advantage, being able to hold them that far, and to score against them, was great. I made some really great tackles against their VERY tall back line as well. Fun fun fun.

Back to reading about adolescent literacy for my professional development sessions. Yay.