It's always darkest before the dawn...

Well, actually it's not, is it?

Try a moonless night at midnight and compare the two. No contest.

Hmm, inane wittering. Heart pounding and clammy palms. Either I'm in love or my exams are close. Hang on, I'll check my calender....




....kin Hellfire, I'm in an exam tomorrow!!!


And the words 'so what?' are coming to mind. I have reached that saturation spot when all I want to do is to see the end of them. I am as close to satisfied with my notes as I can be. (And I have promised not to fire up the laptop for 'one last tweak'). I have put the time in and now I have achieved some geeky, inner peace.

A sort of nerd-vana.

It has been a dull, dull week interrupted only by a few emails from class mates and a trip to 'the smoke'. Last week, I posted a general 'heads up' to my workshop chums that I had notes covering all of the compulsories and if they were short of anything they only had to ask. Well, since then I have had a little interest and true to my word have forwarded what people wanted. I also took the opportunity to include a link to this website (you drink with the devil-you gotta pay...)

There is a slightly cynical part of me that wants to pass on my candidate number and some money for photocopying onto 2 of these people (you know who you are!) and stay at home for 3 of the approaching exams but only because between them they have all my notes for;
property
tax
insolvency
litigation (civil)
litigation (criminal)
Which only leaves company and partnership for me to sit...

Anyhow **cough** Thursday. The day of my next CPS assessment. I had the great joy of travelling up to 'that Lunnon' by train and even better a chance to go by underground. I have no idea why but I'm a bit of a tube anorak-I love 'em! The pity was that Waterloo to Goodge Street is only 6 stops and no changes (in fact I spent longer walking around the stations than on the tube)

Shame!!

I got to the CofL Bloomsbury very early and had close to an hour to kill so I decided to have a poke about (I had to persuade the porter that I was Guildford student-luckily he could see by my sneering, patronising manner that I was). I went up to the library and logged onto the CofL website to check my emails.

Guildford students, please note-Bloomsbury is even slower than the antiquated old cack we have to use. Honestly, it takes about 10 minutes after logging on to be able to do anything.

By the time I had done this (after having put a freshly ironed shirt on-with a pressed tie staying in my bag) it was time to go. I say my tie was in my bag-the reason being was that I had no idea how formal this was going to be. The vast majority of applicants had turned up in their best togs but I had guessed that it would be a waste of good fabric. True enough, it turned out to be unnecessary and we were herded into the very same room that I sat in the last time I went to Bloomsbury.
Just about 2 years ago with the OU-where I had happy memories of holding hands with my former girlfriend and had nearly dropped off with the dullness of it all-the lecture, not the girlfriend!

No chance of dropping off today-there was a tension in the air that you could inhale, well smell certainly.
Our assessment would be in 2 parts.
Some (more) psychometric tests and a case study (ruddy hell-is that a test on law? Whatever next?). There were about 40 of us in the room about 20/20 male to female. I wasn't the oldest but I was probably the ugliest. Damn, curse my faulty genes...

We were congratulated on coming so far, there had been 3,000 applicants originally. These had been whittled down to 600 (us and other groups meeting on the same week to do similar tests). These assessments would further chip the number down to 200 who would be interviewed-for about 25 positions.
Ye gods, I don't make it easy for myself...

The psycho tests each take exactly 4 minutes (there were 8 of them). You are given a basic one or two line intro and have to (as quickly as possible) expand the topic or spew out solutions to a problem or find problems with a statement of affairs.
You are marked on the amount you come up with, their quality and their originality.

I won't repeat any of the questions here (just in case) but the general idea is,

'you work for a marketing company-you have an account to sell a new cola beveridge that has less sugar'. How would you promote it?
And then you have 4 minutes and up to 30 lines to fill.

Ooooooookaaaaaay. Hmm, how did I do? Weeeell, I did between 12 and 20 for all of them. The only other person whose work I could see was doing considerably less-she was managing about 6-8. (but then hers could have been corkers and mine could have been simplistic and easily predictable-who knows?)

The case study consisted of passing advice onto a police officer about an incident that had occurred. We were given the law and the possible sentence and had 30 minutes to write our advice. My study (there was more than 1) was to do with a common 'domestic' situation that had lots of opportunity to go wrong. I recommended caution and further investigation since it appeared that both parties had contributed (but only one had been injured). I tried to follow a rehabilitatory approach rather than a punitive one (even mentioning that prison space was limited). I did about 3 sides (and my arm ached-I get writer's cramp too easy)

The woman whose work I could see (only the length, not the content) had shot off like a train but she peaked at 3 pages too-so maybe par there.

We have been told that the results will be circulated 'sometime' in March for an interview 'sometime' in late March or April. I hope that they use a different tortoise this time, my nerves couldn't stand it if they used Timmy again.

I did manage a first though-on the way out I thanked the invigilators and asked if I could do it again because it had been fun. This surprised the poor dears, they were far more used to students leaving on the edge of hysteria.

This was only half true though-I had no real desire to sit it again but it had been fun. I do like things like that-I can get pleasure from crosswords and sudoku and this seemed a similar thing-an intellectual pursuit rather than anything important.

I am hoping to treat these exams the same way-as a challenge to my notes and my IQ. I just have to hope that the chemical processes that govern my body can be persuaded too....