Victom of Testology

Allow me to explain the title of today's post. It begins with a story. I heard this in a somewhat roundabout way, but will paraphrase whe gist of it: it involves a professor at a medical school who wanted to illustrate to his class of students that tests are simple. His hypothesis was that everybody who had made it into medical school--in general, a highly competitive field where the supply of eager college graduates exceeds the number of alloted slots for U.S. medical schools--has to be pretty good at tests in general. To illustrate this point with his class, he challenged them to select any multiple choice test from any field for him to take given 1 month's time to prepare. Their selection, testing the very boundaries of esoteric knowledge, was the New York Tugboat Operators exam. Apparently, he passed with flying colors. I don't think he quit his day job to become a full-time tugboat operator as a result of it, but the point is that all throughout our medical training, we can never escape tests. Just two months ago I had to endure a marathon 8-hour Internal Medicine boards exam, and sometime in the next few years I will have to take a similar certifying exam for my chosen subspecialty of Nephrology. It never ends. And as a result, I'm pretty good at taking tests.

Why do I bring this up today? Because we got the results of our French "placement tests" today which were designed to determine what appropriate level of French course we should take. I had gone in thinking that I was a "Niveau 2", but when I arrived tonight I was on the list for "Niveau 4". And after the first day of class, I'm not so sure that's entirely appropriate: most of my classmates seem to be on a far more advanced level than I am, at least as far as conversational speaking and comprehension are concerned. Keep in mind that: (a) I've never had any formal French in my entire life, and (b) I just moved to Paris about 3 months ago. I would guess that I would probably fit a little better in the "Niveau 3" course.

I'm going to give it a try--perhaps my learning curve will be steeper being in a class with people who are more language-proficient than I am. But this whole dilemma has been created by the fact that I'm good at taking tests...and thus a "victom of testology"!