Christmas Crunch Time 

My coworker had her baby this week. He is a perfect baby boy, and I could not be happier for her and her family. There is still a lot of upheaval at work, and it is tough to focus on studying when there is so much going on. After work, there is always a Christmas party or a holiday charity drive to attend. For some reason I always say yes to holiday get-togethers, they are much more fun than staying home and studying! Luckily I am done with school for the next two weeks, so my studying focus has shifted to the CTP. I was able to devote a full three hours to studying on Saturday morning, I felt accomplished.

I took the module 2 post test. I didn’t do so well. I was actually a bit miffed at my performance, I haven’t done that poorly on a test since a fifth grade geography group test. Unfortunately, I could not blame this one on anyone but myself. My only consolation was that a co-worker told me that fewer than 20 questions are on the equations in module 2. [editor's note:  10-15% of the questions on the exam contain calculations.  For more information on the CTP Test Specifications, see page 3 of the CTP Preparation Guide.] Hopefully she is right, but in the case that she’s not, I think I will do quite a bit of review of that module.

I met with my mentor this past week and she challenged me to pass my CTP on the first attempt. Many people in my office have taken it and not passed until their second or third try. She is counting on me to do well with the test. I always hate when I let people I respect down, so it adds an element of pressure to my studying. I mentioned that I was having a difficult time finding enough time to study, no matter how much time I tried to carve out, something else always takes precedence. She recommended that I focus more on the later chapters, as that is what she had the least amount of time to study and what she felt had a lot of test questions on.

With that advice, I shifted gears and began to study the later chapters. One thing that I am having trouble with in the later chapters is trying to make flashcards. For example, Chapter 16’s “Policies and Procedures” section seems so intuitive it made for easy reading, but hard to put onto flashcards. I am worried that I am taking it for granted and that there will be a big part of the test on that section and will go blank. I always worry when I feel like the information makes sense and is better presented in paragraph form. Flashcards feel right for multiple-choice formatted questions. When I can’t make a flashcard, I think that it is a subject more conducive to an essay test, therefore not as relevant to the CTP as it is a multiple choice test. This is going to be an Achilles heel for me.

As I continue to study, I hope work calms down a bit over the holidays. I really need to focus the next few weeks because once I am back at school I will be in my thesis semester. I will not have time to focus on my CTP. These next two weeks of break are going to be the time when I can crank up the studying.