June 19, 2004
June 19
Even though I work for a city agency, I signed up to take a civil service exam since our supervisor recommended it. Was scheduled to take the test this morning so I got up early and rode the subway all the way to the stop where the high school where I was scheduled to take the test supposedly was and walked down the street it was supposed to be on. After walking down about half a mile and not seeing the address anywhere in sight, I started getting worried but no one I asked seemed to know where the school was and by the time I walked back down the street to an alleged high school and discovered it wasn't there, it was already a quarter past the scheduled time and I was near the point of panic. I thought about just going home since I wasn't sure if they'd let me in at this point but I decided I should still give it a shot and as I walked to a bus stop I spotted a taxi and jumped in it to head to the high school.
It's a good thing I didn't give up because there was still a huge line wrapped around the high school. I was really surprised actually by the number of people that I saw there--I honestly had no idea that many people take any given civil service exam. Each person was given a card with a room and seat number and I was unhappy to find we would be taking the exam in hot, un-airconditioned classrooms. We were given four hours to take the exam and I had figured it would probably take me less than half of that time to finish it, especially since it was multiple-choice, but it turned out to be harder than I thought. I guess it could've been worse, considering the civil service title it was covering (one covering an area I know nothing about).
We had an appointment with our wedding photographer to do the layout for our wedding album afterwards which basically was a continnuum of the test, given it's multiple-choice like nature (the entire layout was done through a computer program).
Seen on the subway for the first time today:
A woman breast-feeding her baby--in her defense, she was discreet about it, covering her chest with a blanket while the baby was breast-feeding but it was a somewhat unusual sight.
Posted by Jennifer at June 19, 2004 09:12 PM