As an educator, I have always loved giving tests. There was something so rewarding about watching my middle school students march in single file into my classroom and take an exam packet off my desk. On good days, there was still some of the joy of lunch hour left in their eyes at the beginning of the period, and I could pace the aisles and watch their quiet faces fall. The abyss of carefully crafted exams can do that to a student, if their teacher is wise enough.

I have since lost access to the joy of inflicting evaluation pain on young minds, since I’ve become a stay at home mom. I’m sure that’s the only part of teaching I miss. Well, this week, as my husband has been cramming for his Step 3 Board Exams, I got a little piece of that joy back while observing his studying woes.

This test is the best thing I’ve heard about since the Bar Exam. Lawyers, they say, have it so hard, because the Bar exam is something like 120 hours of testing over the course of 3 days. Much to my surprise, those statistics are greatly exaggerated, and the test is only 12 hours long, over 2 days. Which means Step 3, taken during first year of medical residency, has it beat by about 4 hours. Two days of testing, 8 hours each. How beautiful is that?

Secondary education teachers use exams to ensure students are learning the right material at the right pace. In the medical field, they seem to have reached a higher order of testing. Earlier this year, my husband took a test that evaluated him against other residents, based on material he wasn’t supposed to have learned yet. I still lose sleep at night trying to understand the brilliance of this strategy. Maybe if I had continued on to receive my masters in education.

Today, my husband started day one of Step 3. This exam seems to be an improvement on Step 1 and 2, to which he sold his soul. His studying strategy for this exam has involved a lot more scrolling through Facebook and a lot less scrolling through UWorld. Who can blame him? Reinforcement of study habits has taken a significant hit now that the term “pass/fail” has been applied to the test. I mean, how hard can it be to simply pass? Then yesterday, the day before the test and the usual day for onset of panic, the cramming stage hit. This did my teacher soul some good to watch. I’m so lucky he chose a career that revolved around continuous barrages of tests for the rest of his foreseeable working life.

I remember asking him after Step 1 and 2 how many “steps” there were, but the answer is always lost in a jumble of explanations and clueless-ness. I’ve settled on 12, since a 12 Step program seems to be effective in other facets of life. Hopefully the next 9 steps are actually relevant to his chosen field.