"What score do you study for?"

[mrs.b]

I'm a "what if" person.

"What if, someday, my school changes their policy so they convert scores to grades, and include transferred credits in the GPA? What would that do to my transcript?"
"What if I get a version of the exam that differs from the bare minimum I studied, and I'm looking at material I do not know?"
"What if my own son someday learns I aimed for 'good enough,' and not what we always tell him to shoot for: his best?"

I treated exam study sessions as if they were an actual course. When I took actual courses, I wanted the best possible grades I could achieve. I wanted my degree to show myself and future employers that I learned something; if I didn't bother to learn anything more than the bare minimum, what did that make my degree worth? Aiming for "good enough," to me, felt like confirmation of the stereotype that test-out options were cheats and shortcuts. With actual full courses, I had other assignments to help bump a weak test score (and I had a couple, trust me) but for these, that score was it. I tended to study until I scored bare minimum pass on practice tests, then scheduled my appointment a week or two later. Then used that extra time to nail down the finer details. (Mind you, I was taking these will also enrolled in three online courses, so not every moment of that additional time was devoted to test studying.) I passed each exam I took with a margin that made my conscience rest comfortably that I had not taken advantage of the system.