Don't Fail Your Driving Test!!!
Created | Updated Oct 22, 2003
Taking driving lessons?
Going well?
Perhaps you're even lucky enough to have a car waiting for you when you've passed your test.
Well here's some advice, from 'learner' to learner:
DONT FAIL
There are two ways in which you can fail. One is through bad driving, the other is through sheer bad luck.
The first, from experience, is actually my preferred way, and this is the basis of my entry.
Having had lessons of 1 x 2hours per week for three months I went into my first test unknowingly under-prepared. I thought there was every chance of me passing, but I also knew that it could just as easily be a failure. So when I DID come out the other side with 17 minors and 5 majors, I was relitively indifferent. "Oh well" I said "back to work on the lessons I suppose."
Two months later I had been through a rennaissance in my driving skills. I was one with the road (relatively speaking for a new driver anyway).
In the week and a half building up to the next test I had upped my number of lessons, I spent time with my car (which Daddy dearest kindly paid for). Driving it , washing it, feeling it... loving it. As well as spending time focusing mentally on how the test was going to go, and what I might have to do.
I was ready
The date rolled around. It was a brisk autumn morning after a night of fog.
You can understand my exitement as thirty minutes into the test I thought 'That,s it. I've done it. I'm going to be driving this afternoon, and for the rest of my life!'
What I ask you now to do is to try to realise the utter, sickening pain and misery I felt when Mr. Examiner broke the bad news. It seems that that ONE roundabout where you lapsed concentration and thought the examiner said right instead of left, led to a major fault for indicating, amongst only five minor blips.
Of course, by that time in the test I was quite chummy with him, as gleeful as I was, and we chuckled as I eventually exited the roundabout in the correct direction. I was not to know of the stroke he had just made on his clip-board, and the TEN WEEK wait I had to look forward to my next test.
Yes, I'll admit it. I shed tears. I wondered how my life was going to carry on now that I had failed that which I had prepared so thoroughly for.
Obviously, in perspective, you could say that delaying some kid's lisence to drive for a few months is peanuts, when you think about the suffering that goes on all the time around the world.
I compare myself not to those in third world countries, or those under tyrant rule and opression. But never before have I felt such a sense of self-betrayal. It is a pain of a different sort. The thought of how much work you've done to make sure that, this time, you would do yourself proud and pass for sure. Only to be told that your best (at least this time round) wasn't good enough.
But sitting at home that afternoon (I decided I needed the rest of the day off work)I remembered my reaction the first time I failed, and began to wonder what could I have done in those two months that could make me feel the way I felt now?
And I came to realise it was something I did to myself. I built myself up to it, only to be knocked, shattered to the ground. I raised my hope, without considering failure as an option.
Was hope the key to my sense of self-disgust?
I am still awaiting test number three.
So my advice to all you learners out there is one of two things:
Either, never allow yourself to be put into a position where you think you are going to pass. It could lead to a pain like none other you have ever felt.
Or
Dont fail your driving test!!!
Going well?
Perhaps you're even lucky enough to have a car waiting for you when you've passed your test.
Well here's some advice, from 'learner' to learner:
DONT FAIL
There are two ways in which you can fail. One is through bad driving, the other is through sheer bad luck.
The first, from experience, is actually my preferred way, and this is the basis of my entry.
Having had lessons of 1 x 2hours per week for three months I went into my first test unknowingly under-prepared. I thought there was every chance of me passing, but I also knew that it could just as easily be a failure. So when I DID come out the other side with 17 minors and 5 majors, I was relitively indifferent. "Oh well" I said "back to work on the lessons I suppose."
Two months later I had been through a rennaissance in my driving skills. I was one with the road (relatively speaking for a new driver anyway).
In the week and a half building up to the next test I had upped my number of lessons, I spent time with my car (which Daddy dearest kindly paid for). Driving it , washing it, feeling it... loving it. As well as spending time focusing mentally on how the test was going to go, and what I might have to do.
I was ready
The date rolled around. It was a brisk autumn morning after a night of fog.
You can understand my exitement as thirty minutes into the test I thought 'That,s it. I've done it. I'm going to be driving this afternoon, and for the rest of my life!'
What I ask you now to do is to try to realise the utter, sickening pain and misery I felt when Mr. Examiner broke the bad news. It seems that that ONE roundabout where you lapsed concentration and thought the examiner said right instead of left, led to a major fault for indicating, amongst only five minor blips.
Of course, by that time in the test I was quite chummy with him, as gleeful as I was, and we chuckled as I eventually exited the roundabout in the correct direction. I was not to know of the stroke he had just made on his clip-board, and the TEN WEEK wait I had to look forward to my next test.
Yes, I'll admit it. I shed tears. I wondered how my life was going to carry on now that I had failed that which I had prepared so thoroughly for.
Obviously, in perspective, you could say that delaying some kid's lisence to drive for a few months is peanuts, when you think about the suffering that goes on all the time around the world.
I compare myself not to those in third world countries, or those under tyrant rule and opression. But never before have I felt such a sense of self-betrayal. It is a pain of a different sort. The thought of how much work you've done to make sure that, this time, you would do yourself proud and pass for sure. Only to be told that your best (at least this time round) wasn't good enough.
But sitting at home that afternoon (I decided I needed the rest of the day off work)I remembered my reaction the first time I failed, and began to wonder what could I have done in those two months that could make me feel the way I felt now?
And I came to realise it was something I did to myself. I built myself up to it, only to be knocked, shattered to the ground. I raised my hope, without considering failure as an option.
Was hope the key to my sense of self-disgust?
I am still awaiting test number three.
So my advice to all you learners out there is one of two things:
Either, never allow yourself to be put into a position where you think you are going to pass. It could lead to a pain like none other you have ever felt.
Or
Dont fail your driving test!!!
