steering tests

this year we finally put our steering tests online. we have two; practice and tournament. you need to pass the practice one to steer at practices, and both tests to steer at our BLB in july. both are set at 80%, which is pretty high. but most of these questions are repeats of what's been on the tests before, most answers are in our safety manual, and at the top of the test it says that people can email me to double check their answers before they submit them. if they fail the test, they're required to attend the safety class. fail the class and don't take the test? get de-certified. if you pass the practice, but fail the tournament test and don't take the class, you'll only be tourney de-certfied.

you can read more about why we're requiring the tests on our forum. of course there's been push back on the tests. some steers don't like taking them every couple years, especially since they passed it before.

anyway, i'm mostly writing about my feelings, not about why we're making people take the tests. i'm having a terrible time with these. god. i hold my breath every time the results load because the results load slower than the updated number of people who've taken the test. i actually yip for joy when people pass. when people fail i know i have to write an uncomfortable email. ugh. getting bad news sucks. delivering bad news is worse. i'm fucking embarrassed, tho i know i really shouldn't be, because it's your stupid fault you failed! but still. i feel terrible about it. have almost come to tears a few times since i know almost all these steers.

anyway, no real conclusion / point to this post. just that i've been having a hard time with it. hard looking people in the eye at the beach later too after you've sent that email. btw, i can't even bring myself to write FAIL. i write NOT PASS. most people have been pretty cool about it. they know they took a risk and understand that it didn't pay off. i've only had a couple complaining emails. and one person who failed BOTH tests, btw, wrote an angry email back about how he'd rather forfeit steering altogether than waste more of his time at a safety class. his email wasn't at all rude, but of course still rather angry (he did actually say "waste more time"). it was a bit hard since i've known this guy for 8 years now and have always gotten along with him, tho we did have a few difficult moments n china a couple years ago. most awkwardly was that he was literally the first person i saw at a party i went to just a couple days after i notified him of his failing. i was just going to wave and walk past but his daughter basically waved me over. lol. anyway. that's life tho. as the head of the program, and certainly the most visible person of the program by far, i get all the credit as well as all the blame.