3 more days

Just counting down until my Spanish test on Friday, and trying to temper my dreams of a September A100 with the reality that it could go either way. I might pull it off or I might not. It will be disappointing not to pass, but I'm lucky that I can try again in 6 mos and will obviously know that I need to put more effort into it.

I am lucky that I have language skills to draw on- many of my colleagues with passing scores on the lower end must either start all over from the beginning of the FS process, and hope to get a higher OA score, or learn a brand new, difficult language from scratch in 18 mos. My hat is off to all of them. Honestly, I'm not sure I would score any higher on the OA if I took it again. The case management exercise completely did me in, and I thought my group exercise performance was really strong. I could probably improve the interview portion, but perhaps not. So in my mind, Spanish is the way to go. I'm not far from a 3, I think (hope).

So for now, it's all Spanish, all the time. My sweet husband downloaded these BBC Mundo podcasts for me - thank you honey! I admit that until a few days ago, I did not understand what a podcast was. I'm glad to finally get it, and honestly, it's really cool! I understand about 90% of the news I'm listening to. And since the only reading time I have is on the train, I am printing out articles for my commute, too. I must say there is a lot of interesting stuff happening in the world right now, and it's fun to be so on top of it.

For those who aren't aware, apparently the Spanish phone test (can't speak to other languages) is very focused on world events, so you have to know what's going on in the news and be able to formulate opinions on it. Frankly, I don't know how to combat drug violence in Mexico, and if I did, I probably would be doing something else with my life, but I need to figure out a good 30 second response to questions like that. I realized recently that perhaps the problem isn't necessarily my Spanish, but that I don't really know how I would answer these questions in English. So I'm preparing on all fronts.

That's all for now.