The heatwave(10 degrees Celsius) descended on to the city, its citizens scurry about like drunken nesting flying foxes. Their coats pulled tight against their bodies as the wind abrased the city streets. The echos of passing trams, couriers and the tides of taxis passed by me. Little regard is paid to the road regulations, red lights are invitations to sneak in through; the city's hook turns still baffles my mind. I gazed and wonder at the workings of the city, its buildings, the advertising that smack your senses as my vision darted from object to object. My destination loomed overhead, my attention locked on two small objects, hanging similar to a fire alarms as I cross the bitumen and the tram lines towards Southern Cross station.
Southern Cross station, the hub and junction of the city. Its tentacles of rail lines snake out into the outer suburbs; one of these, Caulfield - my destination. Laden like a packed mule and I probably looked like an ass, my purple environmental friendly bag in hand I traveled to Caulfield. Throngs of eager young and myself (not so young) gathered around at the base of the stairs, leading to the Rupert Clarke exam venue. The invigilator joked about how I was on top of the list, they were a nice lot; actually best I've ever had for any exam.
Running my eye over the Melbourne venue, I quick ascertain that 255 tables were setup.Lets see how much the exam might net, say $310 per candidate; holy smokes $79K not a bad effort. The population seemed to comprised of mainly Asian and sub-continental ethnic heritage. I set up my table with my usual paraphernalia and that last minute $10 watch from Big W (still have no idea where my Citizen is). Adjusted my position so that I was upright, did not want my parasympathetics to kick in during the exam.
Faces and expressions around the room ranged from excited to complete utter fear, I was in my usual meh mood. The usual spiel was given before S1 was about to commence. I placed my watch on the table, set at twelve o'clock, so that I can gauge where I should be in relation to the time elapsed. I took a breath and slowly turned the pages to check the exam paper and proceeded to read and understand the passage and its questions and their relevant answers before tackling the next set of questions. Knowing that S1 would be my Achilles heel, my strategy was to read for the understanding, what is the passage trying to convince me of, why are they using this tone etc, before moving onto the next passage while shuffling the previous out and repeating my analysis structure. I completed the section with 30 mins spare, spent another 10 checking questions I was iffy on. I relaxed and stretched for the extra 20 mins, I also knocked over a sharpener of the girl behind me as I carelessly stretched.
My writing has always been staggered, ideas are never fluid, most times my creative side is occluded. So lets bring on S2. The stimulus were on Competition and Political correctness, scribbled down a few main points and started off on "Competition of Humanity", this one took longer than I would have liked leaving 20mins for "Political Correctness in Society". By the end, I was pleased with my efforts, I just now need the assessors to understand my logic and flow.
During the lunch break I wolfed down the rest of my Tim Tams from the previous night. Other candidates were milling about, conversations started of on comparing answers to the previous 2 sections. Naturally the conversations gravitated towards the perverse section 3, the make or break for most Gamsateers and how it has always eluded them. I opened up my packet of MCAT flash cards, it was $5 how could I resist. I didn't learning anything knew from them, but I must say that I felt that they stimulated my sciences, it primed me for the material ahead.
Section 3, thundering across the room, its fine paper poised to cut me to shreds. I sat ready, I dove into my ordnance pack and found that my knowledge was bare, I will have to bring down this beast with my wits alone. In truth it was not that bad, the material that laid before me was presented in a logical manner. If one did not have a grounding in the area it was assessing, the theory and fundamentals were buried within the question and body of the text. I was surprised by the amount of definitions and simple formulae that was readily given. I used the question stem and additional information provided to work most of the questions to arrive at an approximate answer. Some of the material was heavy to plough through, it was worth it for me. A candidate that had a background in the biomedical sciences would have been sweet, as they would require less time to read the text passages. There were little tricks ACER did deliberately such as inverting the graph function, or having additional scales on the left hand side.
I will be honest and say that the UK GAMSAT was not as difficult from my own experiences, sure I should have studied but that was something that was never going to happen this semester. I did not find the day that draining, I am used to lengthy exams and all day lectures. I was satisfied that I completed very section where others said they had to do the bubble cha cha for 20 and 30 questions. The UK version may have different assessment criteria, I am only speculating. Where others whom have taken the March and previous Australian GAMSAT stated that the questions were the similar if not identical. I may have a false sense of achievement, I could be an ignorant idiot and a grand fool in the ways I answered the questions or I could just be lucky. Time will tell, in which side of the ledger I truly belong.
I took the Train, Bus and Plane home. I did wanted to elaborate more. I may edit this in the future, at this moment in time. MEH!
The Mount Isan.
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