A Perfectionist

Sunday, September 19, 2004
No doubt about it. I'm a perfectionist.

I don't want to get into details about exactly what happened but I had something very important to take care of this weekend. If I had known the final result of what I did before I did it I would have told everybody that I would be very satisfied with it. But as it turns out I am somewhat dissatisfied because how I got to the final result did not go as well as I would have liked. Confused yet? Let me give an analogy.

Lets say you want to take the SAT. You decide you would be happy with a score of 1500. You take the test and you get a total score of 1520. However you got that score by getting a 800 in the verbal and 720 in the math. You really would have preferred to have had it a little more balance, say 760 and 760. So instead of being ecstatic with the 1520 you are upset by how that score was made up. You are really good at math and feel that if you would have just done what you should have on that part your score would have been outstanding. You are also applying to MIT and are worried they won't think you are "math" enough or something like that. You know that it isn't a big deal but you still aren't happy with the whole thing in totality even though you are happy with the final result.

So that is basically what happened to me. Am I crazy, absolutely.

3 comments:

Jenny said...

Uh, so are you trying to be sly in your post about the number that you actually got on the test?

Jen said...

Did someone put a new roll of toilet paper on the wrong way again? That's a BIG peeve of mine. If I'm at a friend's house and the TP is on the wrong way, I'll change it. I'm THAT retentive.

T said...

Mehgan,

I wholeheartedly agree with you that all a standarized test does is show how well you can take that standardized test. People who obsess over their scores long after the fact need a different life. I do not think at all standardized test are a measure of a man but that isn't what I said in the post either. I simply was trying to provide an analogy to a situation that happened to me this weekend.

Coincidently enough today at my detist, who I have known since birth, asked me about my SAT scores (which are not what it says above) even though we weren't anywhere even close to the subject.