Testing a theory

By the way, this post is somewhat unique in that it is being written straight to the blog and not to real people.

What I did just now reminds me of one time when I was a freshman at BYU. I had taken a job aptitude test for on-campus jobs, thinking to apply for secretarial work or data entry or something else taking advantage of the fact that I type pretty fast and am a good speller. I got some words wrong on the spelling test. This bothered me because I am a pretty good speller, and it didn't tell me which words I got wrong so I could fix them. Now, you were only allowed to take this aptitude test once per day, but the test was the same each time you took it. So I came back the next day and tried again. Same score.

Hmmm. It won't tell me what I'm getting wrong, but I can retake the test again tomorrow. I eventually realized, when I accidentally logged back into the spelling test instead of another test on grammar or something, that it would let you take the test more than once, but your score only counted once per day. At that point I went into high gear. I took the spelling test again, purposefully getting the first word wrong. Score was one lower. That means I had the first word right. I took it again, getting the second word wrong. One lower, so it wasn't the second word. On the third or fourth try, I realized that it was faster to try to get each one in succession purposefully right and just type "asdf" or something for the wrong ones. Eventually I figured out which three words I had misspelled. Two of them were genuine mistakes and so I corrected myself; one of them was actually right. The program showed the word "insure" and told me to correct it if it was wrong; of course I left it alone because "insure" is a word. Turns out it was intended to be a misspelling of "ensure," so leaving it alone was a mistake. How was I supposed to know that? They're both words. It's like "immigration" and "emmigration," or "affect" and "effect." Two words with different meanings that often get misspelled as the other, but you can't tell that it's a misspelling without the context. I felt like my hard work had been worth it.

The next day I got a call from the manager in charge of the office. He told me I had crashed their database, and for the next three days they would be unable to test students for hiring during the busiest time of year (beginning of Fall semester). He was quite angry and told me never to come to their office again. My attitude was pretty much, "Taking the test multiple times crashed your system? Seems like that's your own fault for building it fragile." Still, I was scared enough that I never applied for another clerical job the whole time I was at BYU.

Related: "The Difference" a.k.a. "How could you choose avoiding a little pain over understanding a magic lightning machine?"

-Max

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"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.