Starting at the End
Well, despite the high hopes and grand expectations (as well as lot of search engine hits), this blog never really got going the way I had hoped.
Neither did my studying. All the study courses are on Saturday, which means I was pretty much left to my own devices. Nevertheless, I sat for the exam on the 4th here in Denver, and was reintroduced to the kabuki world of standardized testing.
The testing room - a meeting room at a local hotel - was set up when I got there. The candidate's table was one of those narrow meeting tables you'd expect for delegates to a UN meeting on crayfish levels in local streams. The proctors' table was a nice, double-wide with a porch, even though they had nothing to do for 6 hours but read the newspaper. I asked if we could switch, and they agreed, which made the test less cramped if not actually easier.
Why Kabuki? Well, while we could start a little early, and finish a little early, we couldn't start too early lest I sneak out and get the questions from a co-candidate in another time zone. The proctor, a pleasant enough guy who really made things easy, nevertheless had to read the rules at the beginning of each session, even though I had already signed them on the test and certified that I had read them when I printed out my ticket. And really, two proctors? It was Sunday, the Religious Alternative Test Date. In NYC, I'm sure you could fill MSG; here, they probably had to check the area code to make sure I didn't mean 917 rather than 719.
The test itself is divided into two symmetrical parts, with the same proportions of questions. So it's not like the morning session is all about ethics and economics, and the afternoon session is about finance and accounting.
The test was difficult, but fair. There's a lot of material to cover, and I didn't get the sense that the test-writers were trying to trick us or play games. But when you get a lot of questions about the difference between LIFO and FIFO, the wording of the question either will or won't change the sign of the answer one more time, so you need to pay attention.
I'll be going through it again in June, either for the Level II or for the Level I again. I'm not entertaining any illusions.