Thursday, May 27, 2010

For test results, click here

6:55 am

This is where I will check in after my driving test today and post whether I passed or not so that everybody can get off the edge of their seats and go on with life. I'll be home and post-ready by between 12:30 and 1:15.

For now, I'll just give you today's update:

I did get out to drive yesterday, deciding that I should maybe just do a final polish on the whole parking thing. I'm so glad I did.

Seems I have a 10% chance of doing a parallel park right the first time, and a 75% chance of knowing when to stop correcting to get it exactly right the other 90% of the time. That's if I'm just parking behind one car and not between two. If I'm between two I know how to correct but have about a 40% chance of not hitting the curb. Hitting the curb, you lose points. Jumping the curb, you fail. So let's hope I'm not asked to do one between two cars up a hill backwards, shall we?

(There is only about a 10% chance I'll be asked to do a parallel park at all, and I have the last test slot before lunch on what will apparently be another oppressively hot day. I'm going to just not worry about this.)

Backing into a space in a parking lot, I have maybe a 5% chance of getting it right the first time, but a 95% chance of adjusting successfully before my examiner dies of old age. There's a 90% chance I'll have to do this one.

Driving into a space in a parking lot - whoa. That one is a big zero. I couldn't get it right even once, and no amount of correction made it perfect. But that's more the fault of my car and its not-so-fab turning radius. Only 10% risk I'll have to do this one, and if I do my confidence is going to get me through the amount of points I'll lose. Since I know exactly what to ask of my car, the confidence level should be pretty solid.

Apart from a little more practise pre-test, I'm left with only one thing to do: be very meditative and focused and do only the thing I am doing when I am doing it. I won't fail on parking. I will lose points, but not enough to fail unless I mess up badly every 6 or so minutes. So I suspect the key is to take it slow whenever I'm asked to execute something, so as to drag out the time spent doing them and leave less for doing something else.

Have a good morning, folks - see you later!

12:00 noon

I PASSED!!!!

I didn't start off well in the parking lot where the examiner was asking me to demonstrate that my lights worked, but when I parallel parked (nailed it) he said 'Beautiful!" and a few minutes later in the emergency stop he told me he was really impressed with my driving.

So now I just have to head to the nearest motor vehicle office and get my license renewed and my picture taken and I won't have to take another road test till I'm 85 or something.

Man. I could sleep for a week - and finally, I should have time to.

3 comments:

Kathleen Taylor said...

WOOHOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

heklica said...

Yaaaaaaaaay! Congrats!!!

Sally Anne said...

Wow, Mary !!!!!!
We are all so proud of you, and knew you would do it spectacularly brilliantly !!!!
Congratulations and have a fantastic day of celebrating today.
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