Create a test-taking timeline

In today’s post, I want to tackle a skill that you will need to master, not only to succeed as a military officer, but to succeed in life. 

LONG-TERM PLANNING

Long-term planning is the ability to look ahead 3, 6, or 12 months, and set in motion a plan to accomplish a goal. 

This can get complicated depending on how many variables you are trying to coordinate (e.g. people, timing, deadlines, resources, weather, bureaucracy). 

Why don’t we learn this skill by planning for something tangible, knowable, relevant, and important, just to get the basics down. 

Those tangible, knowable, and important activities happen to revolve around everyone’s favorite topic: testing.

Today, we’re going to map out a test-taking timeline. 

That is, a timeline showing the dates of your most important end-of-school tests. 

The first thing you have to do is figure out when you are taking your final exams, SAT or ACT tests, AP exams, military fitness tests, and any other major end-of-year projects you will be responsible for. 

This might take a little research or digging on your part. 

It will be well worth it.    

CASE STUDY

First, check your syllabus and with your teachers to confirm the dates for your final exams. Then check the College Board website to confirm your 2nd SAT exam and any AP exams. You should also check with your Field Force Representative to confirm my Army fitness test dates:

Here’s what you might come up with:

• AP Bio (May 16)
• AP Calculus (May 22)
• AP US History (May 18)
• Spanish ⅞ (June 10)
• English literature term paper (June 4)
• SAT (test #2) (June 8)
• Army Candidate Fitness Test (May 30)

Now that you have all of these dates, you’ll want to lay them out on a timeline so that you can see where they are relative to one another and note them on your wall calendar. 

Ideally, you want you to be able to reference these two items at all times (even if that means taping a timeline to the wall in your room). 

Obviously, you can see, visually, that there will be a big cluster of tests in May and June. 

This is something worth noting as you begin to plan the rest of the year. 

It also helps you to avoid scheduling other activities that might conflict with these dates and create even more chaos during these few weeks. 

If this was what your calendar looked like, it’s probably a good idea to leave May and June free of any non-essential travel, vacations, or other distractions. 

How are you planning to study for all of these exams that are stacking on top of one another over a few week period? 

(Hint: start your preparation early)

DECONFLICTION

You might also note that you have an important fitness test right in the middle of those academic exams. This means that you can’t just sit in your room all day studying for weeks at a time and not keep your fitness up. If you ignore your fitness, you’d have a rude awakening when it came time to run, do push ups, pullups, and situps. 

How do you de-conflict this?

You could either reschedule the fitness test, which is usually pretty flexible, or commit to staying in great shape even during the hard core study times. 

However, if you didn’t lay out this test-taking timeline, you might never see that such a conflict existed.  

TOP OF MIND

I’d also like you to highlight these events on your wall calendar so that you are constantly reminded of when these events are taking place. 

Otherwise, if you have these dates only on your phone, they will have a tendency to sneak up on you because the phone doesn’t help you to see out into the future. 

I want you to be able to recognize and plan for things happening weeks ahead of time (not just today and tomorrow).

By the way, this is not really a philosophical lesson. 

This is a practical lesson that you can actually do right now. 

Most of the dates that you need are just a few clicks away. 

If you aren’t in a big rush to get somewhere, why don’t you sketch out this test-taking timeline now?