Kimmy Schemy

Last March, we held a review for the Civil Service Examination for the May schedule. One (the oldest) of my students was Mr. Magdilao*, a 45-year old government employee who, obviously, haven’t passed the CSE yet. And since I’m long passed the time of being intimidated by older students, I treated him the way I treat every other student in class. I lecture, I ask and I give tests.

The first test that I gave seems to be taken very seriously by Mr. Magdilao, it was GRAMMAR AND CORRECT USAGE. It was simple is or are , has or have, who or whom questions that are common to almost all types of tests. Unfortunately, he didn’t do well. After that, he seems to lose interest. He always came late. And during test time, he would go out (without asking permission from the teacher) and would come back when he was sure the test was done.

He would, then, resume his seat and join the checking. Honestly, I don’t mind that. Maybe, he was just embarrassed to get low grades that’s why he didn’t want to join the test-taking. However, when I asked the Math teacher how he is in his class, he said he rarely attends Math. It seems like, Math is too stressful for Mr. Magdilao and the English subject that he thought would redeem him proved to be more difficult than he expected.

To sum it up, Mr. Magdilao paid about P7000 for the review, spent money on gas every time he comes to the center, spent idle time to smoke outside during tests that he didn’t want to join, and FLUNKED the Civil Service Exam for the __th time.

It’s not enough that an examinee attended a review to be assured of passing. It must also depend on the reason why he enrolled in formal review. If his reason for attending is to pass the test, then his chance is slimmer than those whose reason is to recall (review) the concepts behind the lessons to increase his chance of passing.

*not real name

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