Welcome back to this wonderful guide. I’ll try to keep today’s post short and simple because I consider the idea to be quite commonly known by most people. Plus, the concept behind it is quite intrinsically related to what we’ve talked about in previous entries, and what we’ll be talking about in future ones. So, without further delay, let’s get started.
As you’ve probably noticed from the title, today’s topic is blanks, or rather how to avoid them. Blanks are normally something you really don’t want to have within your exam. Just to clarify, I’m more commonly referring to blank spaces within a written test, but this previously stated idea could also easily apply for an oral one. Now, there are very specific situations where leaving a blank is actually considered an intelligent and strategical play during a written exam, kind of like a tactical blank. I’ll return to this idea later on.
I’ll get the basic premise behind this right out of the way: a blank is normally interpreted as a lack of knowledge, and of course what you’re looking for during a test is to display your knowledge. Now, contrary to popular belief, what’s being evaluated during an exam isn’t always just the content of what’s written, it’s also how it’s organized, and how it’s displayed/portrayed. Thing is, more often than not, your whole test won’t get read. With this in mind, leaving a blank would make your lack of knowledge really obvious, whereas writing something even if it’s very lacking or somewhat off topic is still better than nothing. Essentially what I’m saying is, write. Just write whatever comes to mind when you don’t know the answer.
This isn’t as easy as it sounds though, there’s a special technique that’ll boost the success rate of this, but I’ll be explaining that in a future post.
As mentioned before, there are circumstances where blanks are actually an ally. These situations would normally be when an exam is scored using a system that applies negative points for wrong answers. The trick for this is that an actual blank answer is neither right nor wrong, just neutral. Oh, and remember those times when your evaluator would tell you that they prefer you to leave a blank space than actually trying to answer the question if you don’t know it? Well, I’d say around a solid 90% of the time that’s just a bluff. Go ahead, take the risk.
As most things discussed within this guide, subjectivity of course has to make its appearance. It’s more or less a game of deduction and sometimes luck. In my personal experience, when I don’t know the full answer, I of course decide to respond partially. More than once I’ve been marked full points on said question, so I can vouch that this premise works better than not. A quick tip would be to pay very close attention to your way of wording the answer. If you use very academic oriented vocabulary, and ponder over the result before concluding in actually nothing, or partially nothing, your odds are better than if you were to simply answer as nonchalantly as possible. And as a very quick closure, for those extremely difficult situations where you actually have no clue of what to answer I’ll give you the following: take your time. This sounds stupid, but actually works wonders. Take your time to breathe, take your time to think and dig within your most fragile memories, take your time to reread the other questions and your answers. More often than not you’ll be able to come up with at least a half decent response, add confidence to the mix and voila.
Not sure who stated the following quote but: “something that’s worth doing is worth doing badly” (probably butchered it a bit, but you should get the idea).