FEW!!! I Passed, and now...

For those that now us you know that Ashley works for Edward's Life Sciences as a Microbiologist, which is proper because she got her degree in Microbiology, and I have begun a career in Teaching Spanish at Mater Dei High School, which may or may not make sense to everyone because I got my degree in Spanish -- not education, or Spanish teaching, etc. However, I feel like this job really fell into my lap at the right time, and for the right reasons. Now I am not only a full time teacher, but the head swim coach of our rad swim team. Well, this has been, and is great...

BUT, in order to get my California State Teaching Credential from Loyola Marymount University as part of Master's Degree in Education (which Mater Dei does not require since we are private) I needed to pass a standardized test called the CBEST -- which stands for the California Basic Educational Skills Test -- I think. Needless to say that I thought that it was silly that I needed to pass a test in order to keep doing what I was already employed to do, but I saddled up and took it anyway. The truth is that I was pretty nervous, considering that I had not taken a standardized test since the SAT in high school -- which for me was a decade ago. And on top of all of this, the day of the test just happened to fall on Saturday right after we finished the school year. Not like that week is not already stressful enough!!

I arrived at the testing center, which was a University of Phoenix location -- Holler back Shaun! I was pretty shaky, and nervous. The test was scheduled to last 4 hours. It contains 3 sections. 1. 50 Math questions (because I teach math, right?) 2. 50 English Critical Thinking questions (not grammar, which I would be fine with) 3. Two 3 page essays on provided topics. This part was not all that bad, but after hand writting 6 pages my hand was about to fall off -- it hurt for the rest of the day! (Tears, I know)

When it was all said and done I felt OK with it. I came to the conclusion that if I failed any of the three sections it was most likely going to be the English part, just because I felt it could have gone either way. The reality was that I would only have to retake the section that I failed, as opposed to retaking the whole test. Ashley, ofcourse, provided plenty of encouraging words to reassure me that I was crazy to think that being a college graduate from BYU I would have a hard time failing such a basic test, but the doubts were still creeping their way into my mind.

Well -- the test results came back this week via email and I PASSED!!

Nothing to worry about. Now I can continue working towards my Master's Degree at LMU in order to continue doing what I am already doing!

Here are the results for your viewing plessure:

Test Date: 06/14/2008
TRAVIS C HARMOR IRVINE, CA 92618
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Reading Section Scaled Score: 50
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Math Section Scaled Score: 57
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Writing Section Scaled Score: 63
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Cumulative Status: Highest Results

Total Score: 170 CBEST Status: PASSED

Oh, and by-the-way -- Happy 4th of July to everyone.

GO U.S.A.