Measuring where one stands

My brain is fried. It's taken me three days.. THREE DAYS... to finish this ONE test. Granted I am trying to do it between also doing stuff for the kids and cleaning, of which I've done very little the last couple of days, my kitchen is a disaster. I really just wanted to see where I stood on each subject. As I've said, I haven't done any learning in a long time. Not on subjects that I will be tested on. I was worried I would do exceedingly terrible on all the tests. I surprised myself. My scores aren't all that great but for a 7 year stint from it all, I'm more relieved then worried at this point. With some basic refreshing I should be good to go and can possibly get a pretty decent score on my ASVAB.

So, for everyone's amusement I present... my scores.

General Science: 12/25

I had the most trouble with family types of different species. I was decent in Biology but I tended to not pay as much attention.

Arithmetic Reasoning: 17/30

I figured I would have some issues with math, its mostly an issue with the wording for me. There were lots of fractions, I mean, fractions were what. Middle school.

Word Knowledge: 31/35

I knew this would be one of my strongest subjects, I had no worries and flew through the 35 questions in under 5 minutes or so, I had never heard of two of them (raconteur, collusion) and the other two, one I blanked on the meaning (consternation) and the other I didn't think about in a deep enough manner (tactile).

raconteur: A raconteur is someone who tells stories. the word even sounds a little like "recount" (After I read that I realized I had pronounced it wrong, pronouncing something correctly really does make a big difference)

collusion: The noun collusion refers to an agreement of an illicit or secret nature. (I will definitely be using this word more often)

Tactile most nearly means:

A) ghastly

B) easy

C) patient

D) tangible

I really didn't think any of them fit and I originally put down D and then second guessed myself. I suppose I shouldn't have.

Paragraph Comprehension: 14/15

I believe this goes hand in hand with the whole the word knowledge part, I was very confident in this one as well, only one gave me a bit of trouble, the wording seemed to fit two different options and I just choose one.

As the sky opened up and the sun at last rushed into the room, Toby smiled knowing that the game would proceed as planned. It had to, if only because his father would be there and it might be the last opportunity he would have to see Toby play. Now the birds began to appear here and there. Toby got out his baseball glove and ball and waited for his dad to arrive to take him to the game.

8. The mood of the character in the passage is

A) sad

B) careless

C) uneasy

D) eager

Which answer would you choose because I apparently choose wrong... The answer they say is D. I think both A and C could easily fit as well.. oh well.

Mathematics Knowledge: 11/25

Okay so I did so very poorly on this, except for the 15% on the dinner bill I haven't kept up my math at all and here it shows. I could not remember any formulas, the ones I got right were based off of pure logical thinking. I haven't done any geometry since high school Freshman year or so. Going to need to work a great deal on this, I am better then this, I just need to get my brain back into it.

(x-4) (x-4) = huh?

Yeah.

Electronics Information: 12/20

I did so much better on this then I thought I was going to. My brain is just not designed to retain information about this sort of stuff. I am not mechanically or electronically minded. I have so much trouble retaining this sort of information, so when I saw I had only missed eight on this section, even though eight is a great deal for only twenty questions I was practically giddy.

The formula for Ohm's Law is

A) E= I X R

B) E= I - R

C) E= I + R

D) E= I / R

Who?

Auto and Shop Information: 8/25

Okay, I have to say, this is the poorest I did on any of the tests. You would think being married to a mechanic for so many years would have helped me here but no, my soon to be ex husband would be so disappointed in me. I loved hearing him talk about what he did but I can't retain it, even when I asked tons of questions to try to understand. I suppose I won't be working on engines any time soon. Also... I don't care what kind of hammer a mechanic would have or not have... hammers are relatively all the same... they pound things, but hey I got the "what stroke is this in the four-stroke cycle" question right, so... maybe he wouldn't feel it was all a waste.

Mechanical Comprehension: 13/25

This pretty much falls under the my brain isn't suited for this category. I get it but it takes me a long time. I have to do a lot of re-asking before it sinks in. Okay, so here I got one wrong. I would just like to ask if anyone sees anything different in the two towers below, because I see NONE, but apparently there is one.

The answer guide says:

The outlet pipe on tower B is nearer to the bottom of the cistern then the outlet

pipe for tower A.

NONE.

Also.. if someone could explain this one for me...

Question 19 has an illustration of 4 gears and says:

The gears in the illustration all have the same number of teeth. If gear X moves

clockwise, which statement about gear Y is true? (X is the first gear, Y is the 4th)

A) gear Y moves counterclockwise

B) gear Y moves twice as fast as gear X

C) gear Y moves 1/3 slower than gear X

D) gear Y moves moves clockwise

This would be all well and good except the answer in the back is:

D - The energy of movement is known as kinetic energy.

Wait wait, what?

Assembling Objects: 20/25

So here I had little trouble, they weren't terribly difficult. The first part of this test (questions 1-12) You had to figure out which set of pieces best showed how the object would look with all the pieces put together, that wasn't terribly difficult. The second half was just as easy (questions 13-25) you had to pick which figure best showed how it would look like is point A and point B had a line connecting them. Okay, easy, except that the book has another error.

This should have been put in a Highlights magazine, as one of those "lets find out whats wrong with the picture" images. How exactly am I supposed to get this right if all the answers are wrong? (I even circled it for you.)

Anyways, that was the last test and I think even with the low scores in some of the categories, I am very happy with how I did. This is more or less the pre-test for me. Now I know what to really focus on, hopefully Ill do better with the other review tests in here. It's good feeling like I haven't lost as much as I had thought. When I'm done studying, I will be just flying through this test. I'm excited.