I just wanted to write down my preliminary impressions of my RPR 225 test that I've taken -- the second time using the online platform.
It was a full 1.5 months since the last time I took it, all of that time focused on making sure that I had the speed and clean writing, and I can say with absolute confidence that I had those skills in spades! Per my usual impressions, the RPR test was fairly easy: very well read, familiar content, good speed.
What really got me were the nerves! I'd done some visualization exercises as part of my preparation and told myself that I wouldn't so much as bat an eye if the nerves kicked in. I felt pretty calm at the start of my test, my mind was clear, and everything was going well. It's then that I noticed my heart was about pounding out of my chest. My hands were shaking very badly to the degree that they were fitfully dancing over the keys in a bad kind of way. The words kept coming, and I was registering them very clearly in my mind, but then I would remark silently to myself how my I thought I was going to have a heart attack. It was a very interesting disconnected feeling between the calm of my mind and my body, which was freaking out.
There were great stretches that were very clean throughout the test. Whole lines and lines of dialogue without even a misstroke, that's how clean my writing was! However, there was a line or two of just absolute hell, where I couldn't make heads or tails of what I was writing, and had to risk it with a very logically guess lined of gibberish.
I was down to a minute left before I had to upload my transcript, and I'm already a very fast editor, so how does it all fly be? It was just those parts of grueling over the "Is this what I meant to write? What was it supposed to say???" parts. In the end, I got a 93% which I am actually VERY happy with! And for several good reasons:
(1) My previous score was ultimately 89% which means well over 100 errors that time. Not sure how they grade or round up the errors, but this means I got around 79 errors this time. That's a good 30-point improvement!
(2) Speed and accuracy were the least of my problems!
(3) It was a great reminder of how enjoyable and fair and good the RPR tests are!
(4) I still managed to pass the RPR Lit even with the preliminary 93% score, so...if I can just somehow get those additional 22 points I need, I can reach 95%.
I can't even begin to guess right now how it will eventually go, but what matters more than anything is that I know in my heart of hearts that 225 ain't no thang.
I'll write again with what my final score is, hopefully in the next day or two.
