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I have been home schooled for most of my life (from 1st grade and above); I hated kindergarten and my mom listened to my complaints and took me out (I was quite aware of my surroundings despite how young I was lol). I never really branched out into any specialized education... I knew the basics of things, but as I got older, I got lazy and didn't pursue any subject and didn't necessarily care about education. Now, I'm 24, and finally looking into getting a job and I was hit by the realization that a lot of companies tend to overlook you if you don't have some form of diploma or degree, despite what you know you can bring to the table...
So, for the past 2 months, I had been studying online (free) with a regular schedule, even losing interest in playing video games (or doing anything really) in the process. I had adapted some kind of "wake up, study, watch a show while eating, study, go to sleep, then repeat " pattern that kind of just caught on. I hated not feeling like playing any games, but I had previously set a goal on at least attempting to pass the GED test by the end of September, back near the end of July, and I'm actually happy that I met the goal! I went and did all 4 tests in one outing, on the first try. I didn't feel like going back in fragments lol.
I started with buying a book for study material. All I can really say is that the book didn't help me very much. I practically grew up on a computer, so I learned how to type and format my words in the process. Because of that, I pretty much understood all of what Language Arts represented (which is annoying because my RLA score is the lowest; they gave me the most horribly-formatted passages to infer that it actually upset me). It was helpful getting an idea of how the "extended response" was to be carried out by looking in the book though.
The Math section in the book was not good at all for me, except for the fact that the Practice Questions had a broad range of subjects, which allowed me to individually look up some resources online for each one. The book itself did not teach the subjects that well. I realized that every person is different, and they need specific math training material in order to comprehend; because sometimes a type of teaching method doesn't apply to certain people. The book was all over the place and it didn't bother with "holding your hand" through the various subjects. It was almost mechanical. At that point of ignoring the rest of the math material, I opted to skip reading the rest of the book entirely, and only used it to look at the Practice Questions/Answers. I ended up going to Khan Academy , which I'll get to in a moment.
Now to the actual experience!
For the past two months of studying, I glanced at studying RLA first thing, but skipped out on it after that. I ended up going directly into math and literally studying that for the majority of the 2 months. In the last 5 days leading up to my test, I strictly studied science. I took a leap of faith and didn't study a lick of Social Studies, based off of the suggestions here!
Reasoning Through Language Arts:
So it had 3 parts. First part was regular inferences (read the passages and explain what the scenario was trying to explain/describe). Second part was the Extended Response, where it provided two sides of an opposing argument and I had to choose which side was better-supported--strictly by the evidence found in the debate, and not from personal preference. Third part...Sigh. It was more inferences, but in the midst of them were two, nearly in-human passages to infer. About 6 questions were related to one passage, and that passage was formatted horribly; I couldn't read it without getting stuck and having to back-track a few words prior to remember what I was reading. It was a specific style that the passage was written in, so it was legitimate, but it still was ridiculous; as no method of storytelling that I've ever experienced in my life had been that sloppy. I could not, for the life of me, make out what the story was trying to tell; so-much-so that I gave up even trying, as when I looked up, 25 minutes had been spent on that one story alone, trying to comprehend it. While the other story wasn't as bad, it was still rather difficult to pinpoint the purpose of the passage. Although it was better formatted, the story was all over the place.
Other than the two odd passages, I really did enjoy writing my extended response. I probably got graded low on it because it was my first attempt at writing a proper essay, but I feel like I used varied and appropriate words to explain why I felt the way I felt about the opposing argument. The rest of the inference in the RLA test made sense. There were a few tough choices because some of them described two relevant answers pertaining to the scenario, so I'm pretty sure I missed the nail with a few of them. Ultimately, it wasn't bad... but I was very upset with the two passages they gave me (which took up about 1/4th of the amount of answers). Looking back, I would have still skipped studying it, as I understood the process enough to at least feel confident in it. Although I hate that it's my lowest score, I'm still glad that I didn't get lower because of the two passages.
Science:
Science was actually fun to me, because it was part inference - part actual science-related questions. A few of the subjects I had just finishing studying had come up and I was delighted when I knew them. You could probably get through Science without studying, but that would cause your final score to be extremely dependent on how well you are able to handle the inference questions. Although there is more inference than direct science-related questions, the direct questions can't be "assumed" because they have very unique concepts behind solving them. For example (and forgive me if I get the naming conventions wrong): can answer:, "what are the odds of a child being born with the blue-eyes phenotype if their Mom had the 'bb' alleles, whereas the dad had the 'gb' alleles (assuming that "b=blue," and "g=green"? Yeah, I had no IDEA when I first started either! I would recommend studying all of High School Biology, in this specific order: Biology foundations, Cells, Energy and Transport, Reproduction and cell division, and Classical Genetics (specifically the entire block of Introduction to Heredity, I stopped studying Science after I understood the Punnett Squares in the subject of Heredity).
If you're dead-set on taking a shortcut and skipping my above recommendation, I would suggest you at least have a solid understanding of Eukaryotes, Prokaryotes, Plant vs Animal Cells, Photosynthesis, Chromosomes, and Punnett Squares. If you don't know any of the above, then it's like I said: you can still get by with the bare minimum; but I can guarantee that you will feel elated when any of the mentioned subjects come up and you know the exact answer. I would study the exact same sequence again if I had to do it again. A couple of physics questions came up that I didn't know, but they also provided the formula (or it was easy enough to plug an answer by dividing certain numbers by each other until you got one of the multiple choice answers -- yes there are a few Math questions in the science section, but mainly just division or addition).
Math:
This one angered me the most haha. Most of my 2 months were spent studying for math, and I would not change that time frame if I were to do it over again. You absolutely need to know what you're getting yourself into. The reason why it angers me is that I spent so long trying to memorize all of the math, but because I chose to study Science nearing the end of my studies, some of my math knowledge slipped out the window within a 5-day time frame. The day of the test, I quickly re-freshed my memory on some of the subjects. The processes popped back into my head and I was glad, but there was one subject I forgot to go back over: Function Slopes. No big deal you may say, it's only one part of *alll* of whats included in the math section... Wrong! 10 out of 38 questions were related to slopes and my brain would *not* turn back on to remember how to solve them. This left 28 questions that I had absolutely no room for error in. Add on to that, one question was a word problem related to Interest rates on a loan, worded in a way that I did *not* understand. I didn't refresh my memory on what little i had learned about interest rates either. This one giant problem of not knowing over 1/4th of the subject started drilling holes in my head.
At first, I was spending way too long trying to remember, until I had to just flag for review and then go to the next question. My heart literally sank when the results of clicking "next" almost always winded up asking me *another* question about the slope of a function. I just knew I was about to fail math. I ended up spam-skipping all of the slope questions and finding solace in all of the basic equations (what is 'x' if 3x + 6 = 15) and simple word problems (Billy has 3 decorated easter eggs and wants to sell each one for $10. He spends $6 on individual gift bags for each egg. How much does he profit if he sells all 3 eggs in their own gift bag) Ok, the questions weren't as simple as the above example, but they were in the same ball-park.
Ultimately, you're going to need to know Functions, Function Slopes, and basic equations, as those equate to nearly 1/3rd, or more, of the test. Luckily I remembered functions and the basic equations, the slopes were just foreign to me at the time. Geometry questions were few and far in-between, but you're going to want to know *all* of Basic Geometry just in case. The test gives you the formulas of all of the geometry, surface areas, and volumes, but if you don't know what you're doing, you won't know how to apply it. Even if you learn geometry once and then forget, seeing the formulas again will resurface the knowledge; but it can't resurface anything if you never learned it to begin with. One thing I can honestly say that the Book helped me with was looking at the Math section's practice questions. If I didn't understand the questions, I just went to Khan Academy (or looked up "The Organic Chemistry Tutor" when Khan's teaching method began to over-complicate some things, like the concept of finding areas of a cube when dealing with fractions). This allowed me to see the scope of the Math test and study what I didn't know. I would kinda recommend the same type of approach. Find some solid study material with a broad range of questions, look at the questions, and then study what you don't understand until you do.
Social Studies:
Not much to it. I didn't study a single thing because I hate history and politics! I didn't need to study anything. There were a few specific words/concepts included in some questions that I didn't know the meaning of (I can't even remember what the concept was anymore), but it was only a few. I was able to guess my way through what I didn't know, by re-reading the passages. Speaking of passages, Social Studies includes them just like RLA, but they are much more refined, as they are pretty much excerpts from history books (Constitution / Speeches, etc). If you know how to read, and if you got past Science or RLA, then you can get through this!
What I wish I would have known:
- That Slopes played such a big role in the Math section. Also that I should have spent an entire day going over all of the math material, because trying to cram a refresher in, the morning-of the test was not a good idea.
- That you didn't really have a lot of time to stop and pause on a question. If you did that too many times, your time would run out very quickly and would cause you to rush through the last few questions, or make you trip over your fingers trying to go back to the questions you flagged for review. If there's a concept that you cannot grasp, don't overthink it and just flag it for review and skip! If you know the concept and just need a bit of time to remember it, then you might be okay.
- That it was gonna be so cold!!! You can't get up from your test until you finish the subject (or until after you finish Part 2 of your RLA, or again when you finish Part 3 of your RLA). I was shivering in there because I didn't know to bring a jacket. I was nervous because of fricken slopes, and it made me have to pee way too often. I made the mistake of skipping RLA's Part 3-completion break (because I had just taken one from Part 2) and went straight into my next subject. BIG MISTAKE! Half-way through the second subject, I couldn't sit still because of my sudden affliction of Explosive Bladder Shivers!
Looking back, I still wouldn't have swapped to a fragmented approach (study one subject religiously and then go take that specific test; pass, come home and then repeat the process for the next subject). I'm sure I could have gotten 175+ on Math if I did that, because Slopes were fresh in my mind the day I learned them, but because time passed, I quickly forgot. But I'm more happy that all my of scores are in the same range, makes me feel like my method of learning is very equal on any subject. Then again, I'm used to sitting at the computer for a long time and not getting antsy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I know it's long, but I hope any of this helped at least one person.
Submitted September 26, 2018 at 06:35AM by ShadowPersonified https://ift.tt/2O9ZHE6
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