I will be reposting some of my answers to the better questions I've gotten on Quora.
What are some loopholes in life that you have exploited?
Gifted and Talented Test
In Texas, they have advanced level classes called GT (Gifted and Talented). One of the things you could do in middle school is start taking Algebra or Biology a year early, and they had a test to see if you would excel in the accelerated curriculum or not. One of the test’s (IQ maybe?) tested the ability to recognize patterns. For example, what design out of these four choices is the correct patch for the missing piece. Apparently after Googling, it is called Raven’s Matrices? Image below.
So I was doing well at first, but as it got harder, I was racking my brain trying to figure out the answer. Since I was a huge perfectionist at the time (slightly cured now), I couldn’t let it go. Well as I was flipping the page of the test, I realized that I instead flipped the page of the answer sheet. “Wait a second,” I thought. “The answer sheet is only one page.” But it wasn’t. It was one sheet with pink and yellow carbon copy sheets underneath the white answer sheet (like on receipts) but being sealed on both sides, you couldn’t see them. Only, the yellow or pink (can’t remember which) didn’t have A, B, C, and D slots. It only had one per answer. Not wanting to give myself away, I selected most of the right answers from that point on, getting others wrong on purpose. The results came back that I was good for the advance level in most categories, but in pattern recognition I was at the genius level. My conscience was getting to me so I told my parents about it, and my dad laughed, saying it was ingenious to figure that out and although my mom disapproved, I didn’t get punished for it. I did well in advanced math classes until university.
Students with Disabilities Department at University
I take an extremely long time to take tests. Some of that is due to my perfectionism, some due to distractedness, and some due to my meticulousness (also perfectionism perhaps?). I had no chance finishing my university physics and math tests on time, and found after some freshman classes failed that if a get a test, I can get extra time. So I got tested and got the extra time, which helped tremendously with my test anxiety and grades. But since I was in the Students with Disabilities Department, I got early registration for classes. This allowed me to get Scuba Diving, Oceanography (the easiest and most fun physical science class), and many good professors. While many students had to wake up early, log in really fast on a bogged down system to seal the best classes, I got early access. It was pretty awesome.
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