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WARNING: COMPUTER ERRORS DURING STEP 1
Preface: I had a lot of pre-test anxiety (understandly so, I'd say). I am also a pretty slow test taker... I like to mull ideas over before making my answer choice, and usually it works pretty well for me.
So... block 3 of the exam rolls around today (block 1 was pretty straightforward, 2 was a bit harder and I had to scramble to finish in time) and about 5 minutes in, a "Warning, You Are Taking An Unauthorized Break" screen comes up, in the middle of me answering a question (and it had been about 5 seconds since I had last clicked anything)! WTF?! So, I click out of it, and notice that my block time went down 8 minutes! 😱 So, I go to get a Prometrics employee and she can't do anything about it except to file an error report. So by now, I've lost about 11 minutes of my test time! I had had to scramble in the last block to finish in time, so by this point I was freaking out, heart pounding, and just raced through the block of questions... panic attack style... pulling out key words, skimming paragraphs and not really thinking. I know for a lot you 10ish minutes isn't that much, but it set me over the top to feel extremely anxious for the rest of the block.
After that, I calmed down, took my test, but did notice that throughout the test it would take several seconds to change from one screen to the next every time I would change questions (much slower than my practice tests at home) and sometimes would pause for 10, 15, 20 seconds... And in the last block, the clock showed 30 seconds left (with which I had one question left to answer), but then it said the test had timed out!! So, I didn't even get to open the last question... another error! 😕
So, I talked to someone afterward to file a report and she told me that my particular computer had been malfunctioning for a while, they rarely use it for tests (and especially not the Step exams, she tells me), so she really wasn't sure why anyone gave me that computer today anyway!!!! 😱 WTF!!
It sucks to have studied so hard for this test and to feel like it went so terribly... and a big part of that was anxiety caused by computer malfunctions!!
Anyone know how the "error report" for Step 1 goes? Or have any suggestions for what I should do from here?
Preface: I had a lot of pre-test anxiety (understandly so, I'd say). I am also a pretty slow test taker... I like to mull ideas over before making my answer choice, and usually it works pretty well for me.
So... block 3 of the exam rolls around today (block 1 was pretty straightforward, 2 was a bit harder and I had to scramble to finish in time) and about 5 minutes in, a "Warning, You Are Taking An Unauthorized Break" screen comes up, in the middle of me answering a question (and it had been about 5 seconds since I had last clicked anything)! WTF?! So, I click out of it, and notice that my block time went down 8 minutes! 😱 So, I go to get a Prometrics employee and she can't do anything about it except to file an error report. So by now, I've lost about 11 minutes of my test time! I had had to scramble in the last block to finish in time, so by this point I was freaking out, heart pounding, and just raced through the block of questions... panic attack style... pulling out key words, skimming paragraphs and not really thinking. I know for a lot you 10ish minutes isn't that much, but it set me over the top to feel extremely anxious for the rest of the block.
After that, I calmed down, took my test, but did notice that throughout the test it would take several seconds to change from one screen to the next every time I would change questions (much slower than my practice tests at home) and sometimes would pause for 10, 15, 20 seconds... And in the last block, the clock showed 30 seconds left (with which I had one question left to answer), but then it said the test had timed out!! So, I didn't even get to open the last question... another error! 😕
So, I talked to someone afterward to file a report and she told me that my particular computer had been malfunctioning for a while, they rarely use it for tests (and especially not the Step exams, she tells me), so she really wasn't sure why anyone gave me that computer today anyway!!!! 😱 WTF!!
It sucks to have studied so hard for this test and to feel like it went so terribly... and a big part of that was anxiety caused by computer malfunctions!!
Anyone know how the "error report" for Step 1 goes? Or have any suggestions for what I should do from here?
The conditions during my test probably cost me only a question or two at most (I'm hoping)... were it more, like in your case, I might have set the building on fire!
