Focus

Posted on June 20th, 2007 by abbynearlythere.
Categories: Report from the Trenches.

Did some stats on my performance. I think I need to focus on the areas in Salmon. My performance on these areas is consistently poor. How can I know so much and get so many wrong?!!! BTW, no idea why the quality of this image is so poor on the blog here. Try this link for better viewing.

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Frustrated!

Posted on June 20th, 2007 by abbynearlythere.
Categories: Report from the Trenches.

OK, I promise I’m not developing a persecution complex, but sometimes it feels as if the world is against me studying for this exam! I came over to the library for a key tradeoff since Katy’s car died outside my place last night. I am now at seat #3 in the Cameron Village Library. At the first two locations, I couldn’t get WiFi access. I’m currently writing this in notepad while I try to connect one last time. At the first seat, some woman started telling me about how her husband is at mortuary school and that he started with 20 people in his class, but now there are only 13 because people keep dropping out because they can’t handle “the corpses they find in the woods that are missing feet.” I didn’t say a word to her, and she told me all of this within 2 minutes of me sitting down. Halfway down the stairs, another dude stops because I’m wearing a Loveless Cafe t-shirt and he tells me all about his time in Nashville and asks me when I went there an if I liked it and am I local and his name is Dave. I’ve always been flypaper for freaks, and today’s library experience confirms it.

w00t! It just connected. Gotta run! This seat isn’t next to a plus, so my productive time is VERY limited.

OK, I’m disconnected. The WiFi here is CRAP! Seriously, about the worst I’ve ever encountered. (Note that everything written in this post up to this point was written in Notepad while waiting for the damn hell connection to work!)

Back home where the kittycats roam, where the WiFi is plentiful and strong!

Just finished another practice test. I’m not doing better. I want to be doing BETTER!!!
exam 4

3 comments.

Hrmm…

Posted on June 12th, 2007 by abbynearlythere.
Categories: Report from the Trenches.

And it says this ain’t bad the first time you take any single test. Doesn’t seem great. I know it’s way better than the first time I took a test. As I said, I didn’t do it right and ended up REALLY tired near the end and rushing a tad. My neck hurts. WHINE!

Um, my Ph.D. is in School Psych, and my postdoc was in Neuropsych Assessment, and I got a 37.5% on the Psychological Assessment section. That’s just bizarre! I think I have too much real judgment getting in the way of remembering what they think the answers are!

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Today Isn’t Going As Well As I’d Hoped

Posted on June 12th, 2007 by abbynearlythere.
Categories: Report from the Trenches.

OK, I’ve made a schedule, and I didn’t do today right. Instead of taking the exams in study mode and making flashcards as I go, I need to take them in exam mode and then make the flashcards after the fact. Or maybe leave it in study mode, but still, making flashcards as I go has meant that I’ve been working on this one exam for 3 1/2 hours! That’s way too long! And I’m only on item 142. Lawd, this is going to take forever!! As I’ve been working, I’ve been hovering around 60%. I think that’s fairly respectable, actually. On my first practice test ages ago, I got a 39%. That was NOT good. If I do my 6 day a week schedule and take the test on July 19th, I should be where I need to be. Man, I’m so much better at recognition than free recall. I’m so pleased it’s multiple choice. That’s kind of its only good quality.

In other news, I’ve made so many flashcards that I can’t feel my right hand as I type. That doesn’t seem good. :(

82 comments.

5 Months Is Not Brief

Posted on April 17th, 2007 by abbynearlythere.
Categories: Report from the Trenches.

I’ve moved. I’ve job-hunted. I’ve had lots of people interested, but I’m still unemployed. I had hoped to get a position in a group practice. While building up a client base, I was going to start studying again. Now, I have work I can do if I’m licensed. I’m not. So I’ve decided to rehit the books. Yuck! But getting it behind me seems of the utmost importance.

I just started letting the EPPP emails back through (I’d filtered them into archive). Someone had asked about pass rates for the exam. Here was a response:

Oh, I can’t wait to see what answers you get here. The month I took it, there was a 55% pass rate, which I hear is close to average. This is why I am writing ASPPB, APA, etc. Now that I have gone thru the process I look back as a scientist, systems consultant, and with an ethical perspective and can hardly believe what I see. No one can pass the exam without studying the TEST, and then we have these dismal pass rates even after they do. The evidence therefore suggests that our training does not provide us with what the test purports to measure–an adequate level of competence to practice; but studying the test questions does. This is preposterous. Just studying tells us that there is little correlation between test questions and this factor.

Moreover, I believe it is unethical that the profession allows us to pay outrageous fees for the very cheaply produced study materials, workshops, tests, license applications, etc. to this cottage industry. In my opinion, the board should provide the study materials for free with a small charge for costs only.

I have asked many people about this crazy process, asked for some explanation, and the only thing I have been told is “it helps to keep people out of the profession!” What? At this juncture? Yet, it is tolerated. The state of CA had some nutty pass rate (below 50%) for the orals and it took a lawsuit or threat of one to change the exam process. Yet, no one seems to be speaking out about the national exam. I do not understand this.

If you want a copy of my letters to the Board and APA back channel me and I will provide. In my opinion the process is not fair or ethical, nor does the exam provide a valid or reliable measure of competence to practice.

But yes, the pass rates are really low, as they SHOULD NOT BE.

Then there was this response from another person on the list:

Amen, Amen, sister. What is the purpose of selecting an APA approved program and internship if the APA still feels the need to test our qualifications afterwards? Where is the logic? A standardized, multiple choice test at this level of education only tests whether (and to what degree) one has familiarized themselves with the specific material on the
test. Asking a Ph.D. about Piaget’s stages of development, or Erickson or Maslow is insulting. I had those topics in first year undergraduate school. And there is very little, if any, correlation between my ability to recall the specifics of Maslow’s hierarchy and my ability to, through an integrated conceptualization of psychopathology and treatment, assist client’s with their emotional struggles. I find the entire process, demeaning, insulting, unnecessary, unethical, exploitive, and prejudicial.

You could take my two graduate degrees in psychology from Vanderbilt, attach them to my APA approved internship document-of-completion and postdoc hours, and attach that to letters of recommendation (from supervisors, advisors, etc.) regarding my functioning [both academic and clinical]. Send all of this to the board (hey, like most of us did to sit for this test)and first ask, upon reviewing this info, “Is there a reason we should feel this person is “NOT” prepared to practice? If the answer is “No”…mail me a license and take a nap. That process would make sense to me.

This feels like a means to rip me off for 1-2 thousand and maintain a system that appears to be based more on exclusion than evaluation. CA
licensing regs are just insane. I was told by the Boards in WA and ID that Oregon’s requirements are designed to keep non-local practitioners out. Regardless of the latest gossip about this, it should be clear to all trained well in the field, that the process of licensure [as it currently stands] is hierarchical hoop-jump at best, and a complete sham for answering the question of competence.

Ooooo that felt needed. Now that I got that out… I have to go back to stuffing my head full of what they may ask me so that I can try to impress them with my professional expertise and wisdom visa-vie my recall of Psych 101. Thanks for allowing me to vent and I would be interested in any grass-roots critiquing of our current process.

I know that none of this stuff helps me pass, but it helps to know I’m not the only one livid that there is something this difficult and useless standing between me and independent practice after spending a third of my life preparing for my profession.

0 comments.

Brief Hiatus

Posted on November 13th, 2006 by abbynearlythere.
Categories: Report from the Trenches.

Since I’m moving from Boston to North Carolina in a week, I’ve had to temporarily stop studying and deal with the more pressing details of the move. I’ll be back, so keep watching!

4 comments.

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