23rd Rule of Acquisition - Nothing is more important than your health… except for your money (Remote Exam Thoughts)

In the before times, I understood the 23rd rule to mean work-life balance, with a tiebreaker going to work, usually. In the context of getting Salesforce certifications during quarantine it really is about my health. I am not a fan of remote testing and with the pandemic, sitting for an exam at a testing site can be life or death.

With every exam I take, I go through the same emotional roller coaster. The first stage is shock/doubt. Specifically, after the first five questions I start to wonder if I signed up for the wrong exam. Once that passes, I start to panic that I won't have enough time and this leads me to finishing the exam in 20 minutes. After I get to the end I calm down and go through each question a few times until I am comfortable that I have answered all of them correctly, or at least answered enough to pass the exam with a cushion.

The final stage is where onsite testing is critical for me. When you are onsite you can have a pencil and paper. This has become key to me passing the exams. After I answer all the questions, I write down the numbers 1-60 in three columns (20 numbers per column). I then look at each question and write down the letter and review my choice. After my review if I like the answer I cross it out on my paper immediately. If I am less than 90% confident, I circle it. If I am less than 50% confident I don't do anything to the answer.  

As I go through the exam, I tally up all the ones that I think are good. Then I go back to the circled ones and think about them. If I change the answer or after thinking about the answer leave it unchanged, I cross it out and add it to the tally. After those are done I go to the WTF questions and try to figure them out. I use the whole time and usually feel confident that I have at least 80% or better.

In some cases I actually diagram out the solutions on the paper. I also try to be consistent in my answers. So if two questions seem similar enough, I try to make sure that I answered the questions consistently. Usually there is enough of a difference that I can tell that one is 100% correct and then I can get some insight into the other question. There is a fair amount of mouthing the questions, swearing and in the case of the Community Cloud certification, some gesturing at the screen. I expect these behaviors would be problematic in a remote exam. 

Back in the day, I worked in a chemistry lab and a supervisor shared with me something his organic chemistry professor told him. If something works once, it's a trick; if something works twice it's a technique. Having passed 4 exams on the first try, this is a technique for me.