Testing anxiety

You always do? Just how many times have you done this?

 

Guess I should have done about the same number over more years, but only one company had me do a road test.

 

Well it would not bother me too much to get another. Ive only had the one test back in the 80's lol. I get to forgetting how.

 

I was always told you're never gonna impress the guy (or gal) you're testing with by throwing all kinds of knowledge at them. Answer what they ask, show the skills they ask, and be done with it. I failed my first CDL test at the state dmv because i couldn't do the parallel park, second time i nailed it. I had studied the pre trip so hard that i breezed through that, but failed to pay enough attention to the backing skills. Remember that tester is a human too.. be upfront and honest.. Say something like, Im trying to be as professional as I can but my nerves are naturally high at the moment, please bear with me. Sometimes a little decency and honesty goes a long way. Good luck driver, you can succeed

 

When I was at the dentist last week getting the infection taken out they had the skills to do it with local injections but failed to have gas or other medicines I usually require for that kind of work.

They took my BP before starting the work of removing the abscess and so on and found the BP to be about 210 over 130 and dithered. They did not want to continue. I told them that is exactly what happens when there is a alot of anxiety and no gas plus no medicines for that. Maybe they would like to be in the chair instead fixing to have very large sharp tools coming in. See how they do with the BP. HA.

One asked me about how do I make a big rig ready for the road and that refocused me to oh I dont know 200 or so individual items on a big rig end to end that needs to be examined completely with a vareity of thoughts for each one.

The person assisting listened to and got a education on trucking while the doc butcher worked fast. The infection got taken care of. But the next time that happens I find someone with gas. The BP situation was too dangerous. But not my record as far as high numbers. (Ive been at 300 before...)

Going over the long forgotten small things about pretripping a big rig was a good mental exercise that completely removed me from the situation in the chair. Im pretty sure if I was tested today at the DMV I wont pass because I have had real world pretripping for too many years versus decorated book state answers that the tester wants to hear.

 

You've been through the training...Don't stress it...Take what you've learned and the skills you've acquired and just apply them and you'll be fine...I was nervous too when I took mine but I am telling you there's no need to be....Better to be relaxed...Relaxed but pay attention obviously to your driving...Don't "try" to drive, just drive naturally if that makes any sense

 

This post is probably too late but watch some road test videos to remind yourself of what is commonly tested on road tests.