Subj : Checking in
To   : ROB MCCART
From : Mike Powell
Date : Sun Jan 09 2022 10:51:00

> A 'friend' once burned my hand with his bunsen burner and when I yelped, the
> Chemistry teacher gave ME heck for disturbing those around me.. "You may be
> able to screw around and get 80's but those around you can't so..."

My freshman year in college, I was in an Astronomy lab with a guy I knew
from high school and a friend of his.  We got a similar lecture (although
more friendly than stern) from the TA one evening.  We tried to tone it
down after that.

> When our SAT tests came up (University entance exams?) I was thrilled because
> everyone who worked after school wanted to get time off to study and take
> sample tests and meet with tutors.. and that meant I got almost unlimited
> overtime at the grocery store I worked part time in. My friends all said I was
> crazy for not studying like crazy for the SAT's but, in the end, I didn't know
> anyone personally who scored as high as I had (a 94 percentile)..
> Sorry but there's no direct way to convert from our system to the USA system.

It made sense to me.  We have the SAT and the ACT.  Which one you take
depends on which universities you are considering.  Most kids I knew took
both, but I only took the ACT.  Those returned numeric scores, I think the
highest you could get on the SAT was 1600 and the ACT was 33 or 34.  We also
had aptitude testing throughout primary and secondary school that returned
percentile numbers.  I always did pretty well on those.

> I also, many years later, took a very expensive ($300) I.Q. test for a large
> company who wanted to hire me for a managerial position. In the end, much to
> the disappointment of the district supervisor doing the hiring, the head
> office forced him to promote someone from within.. but just for fun he showed
> me the results from the I.Q and Psych tests I took over 3 or 4 hours that day
> and their main comments were that I'd have to work on not getting too close to
> the employees, I was too 'friendly' and that, given the scores I attained in
> the math and science portion of the tests, they highly doubted I could have
> managed that without cheating. Since the guy hiring me was sitting there
> watching me take the test he knew I hadn't had any chance to cheat so it was
> all sort of a joke to us.

When I was between jobs, in addition to taking the max number of public
service exams allowed (I scored high enough they had to interview me for
multiple jobs, and I eventually got hired off of the results of one of
them), I also worked briefly for a temp agency.  There was one place they
thought I would work well in.  I was reading all of the rules and realized
whatever company it was, I was going to have to dress like an Amish person
to work there.  Seriously!  For women, the dress code even worse.

There were several other things I did not like about it, so I was not too
disappointed when I did not pass the test for that one.  I ran out of time,
so they wanted me to take it again, untimed.  By then, I had several leads
going with the state so I intentionally flunked it.  :)

I never found out what company it was.
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