Ya those tests can be gimmicky. I found a PDF, threw that in MS word, got the word count, truncated it to fit 2000 words, and went through it. Stressing myself out I hit 800 and I'm like this is in no way sustainable, but maybe there's word length, reading level, etc. all factored into the official test.
I don't test nearly as high now and TBH testing at the time had serious limitations w.r.t. resolution above say, 145-150. I did well on PSAT/SAT/ACT. I left boarding school for a final year at New Trier (public) All schools were public save for <two years in CT.
LOL but I'm sure you had some fun doing it. I'm telling you man, better to rise to the challenge than not be challenge at all (or worse, held back from participating). I gotta go do real life shit, I'll catch you later.
Yeah, but I bet that you can read aloud much faster than most can read to themselves. You don't recall visually?
I meant reading it for the first time I found a random PDF and then put that in MS Word to find the word count and then timed myself for a full minute to get wpm. Everything is visual. Even math. If I'm reciting digits it's usually wherever I read the digits from (wolfram alpha, some online website, or whatever). Look up "autobiographical memory". It's like you can play your life back in movie form, and I just go to the source of wherever I found the material and then re-read it. Sound is different. I was big into music. I don't have perfect pitch but I can recall the musical notation to every piece I've ever played, so it was more visual even for sound-based memory.
My neighbor was a United pilot and the entire family flew, instrument rated, etc. Patrick was the youngest son and 24-5 at the time. He was a degen gambler and had been through GA by the time we made the flight out to LV for my birthday. So that's the back-story on Paddy. Irish-Catholics were frowned upon in Kenilworth in the late 80s, early 90s. A Protestant enclave and "ICs" were referred to as the IRA in my neighborhood. My family were/are Liberal Dems and (non-practicing) Lutherans as all Scandinavians in the area. My family was close with our IC-neighbors as we didn't care about their affiliation. So Patrick and I had plans for counting on the LV trip. I'd been teaching him counting with Revere and Uston APC for a couple weeks and he was solid enough to play a BP as long as I was at the table to step in if he got in trouble. Basic-strategy 21 has a small edge loss but is exploitable due to conditional-probability if you're tracking; 21 pays 3/2 so if you can ascertain the running count, and it's high, you increase your bet-sizing proportional to the running count and you can exploit the higher prob of hitting 21 at 3/2 payout. Caesar's had a few single deck tables and LV Club had a single deck with favorable rules (6 card 21, UL splits, etc). So we fly out of Palwaukee airport in his 172. Frequent stops at hub airports and super uncomfortable. Had a mishap over the lake as the thing is high wing and we were ascending into the path of another Cessna from Meigs Field. Pat caught it in time but he took it as a bad omen. We finally get to LV on Friday around 9PM so we get our rooms and crashed...
And ya, I probably could. Never any struggle. You know any other languages? If not, you could probably pick them up in a matter of days. Really just memorizing vocabulary, learning basic grammar to tie them together, and then just iterating over everything in your mind until it clicks.
I worked in govt and went through a language course for the posting in Colombia. Swedish, Spanish, French. I am not fluent in Swedish even though it's my ancestry.
I don't want to get bogged down with anecdotes so I'll finish the LV trip tomorrow and move past the early jobs -> FSO -> trading as an independent in vol -> time on the buy-side -> arb-discoveries.