Half-way There!

I'm in a state of shock, still.

I can't believe I passed the written test for my interpreter certification!

I had studied a fairly decent amount of time, in hour to two hour long sessions for about 4 weeks about 3 times a week.

I was feeling pretty okay about the test, but a little burned out at the same time. (This semester's been really heavy with homework).

I spent the night before my test over at my friend Hannah's house to study.

Hannah is in the Deaf Studies Program, too. She's in 3 of my classes this semester, and we've become each other's confidants when it comes to keeping our cool this semester. 

We keep each other on track, study together, practice our ASL together, and share chocolate when our days have been hard. I love her guts.

So the night before the test, we sat down to take the practice test, took it and thought we did pretty well on it, then we looked at the result.

66%

Oh. Boy. 

Needless to say, the high level of confidence we had had just been shot down and trumped on by a fat leprechaun. From there it got pretty hard to want to study, but we did as much as we felt motivated to do, and then took the rest of the night watching things that made us feel better, and ate pizza. 

We decided from that point that the test would be a practice test, and if we didn't pass (because we were pretty sure we weren't going to) then we knew what the test looked like and could take into account of what better to study for the next time. 

The next day we took the test, both feeling absolutely uncertain about how we had done. People asked, "How do you think you did?"  I couldn't even take a shot in the dark. I had legitimately no clue.

Now it was time for the waiting game. 

They said to check my email over the week for my results.

I think I checked my email about 600 times that week.

Then Friday afternoon I got an email.

I went to the interpreting lab to check my email, there it was.

I flagged down my teacher (who had urged me to go in to get the test done before I graduated) and told him the results were in.

I opened it up.

"Dear Destinee, Congratulations! You've passed the written exam!"

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?! :D

I cried.

It felt like the 5 years (yes, 5) that I had been going to college had finally paid off. I felt like all my hard work had paid off. 

My teacher was pretty excited, too.

The teacher who teaches all of my interpreting classes was in the interpreting lab at the time. He peeked his head around the corner, I told him I had passed. He said, "YES!" high-fived me, and said, "You're welcome". Haha

My friend Heather came into the room and saw me grasping my face, with tears in my eyes and though something was wrong. She said, "What's wrong?!" I told her I passed my written test, she squealed and hugged me.  

It felt pretty great to be around people who knew how big of a deal passing the written test is to a budding interpreter. People who are more affiliated with the Deaf Community tend to understand how big of a deal it is. I felt surrounded by a big group of support (:

Then I told my friends and family, they were equally excited. I could feel my mother's pride oozing over the phone. 

So that's it. I'm halfway there. I've got the performance I still need to take in order to get fully certified in Utah, but that will come after I've had a little more practice interpreting. . . .  or any for that matter. (;