Evening star., 1947-06-29
By Miriom Gutenberg

By Miriom Gutenberg
After II years in the newspaper
business, I was assigned the other
day to find out if was cut out to
be reporter.
The District office of the United
States Employment Service had
offered to run news and radio
writer's through serits OF tests
designed to find out in few hours
any individuals aptitude for several
thousand jobs.
Reinforced by hearty lunch and
some examining on long division,
reached the testing room at 2 pm
Five hours later, I went home with
my score card.
At the start, Mrs. Ethel D. Starr,
chief of the District USES testing
division, gave five of us two pencils
each, told us we couldn't smoke lit
slows you DOWN and closed the door
On the door was sign saying
Quiet, Testing in Progress.
Practice Tests Easier.
Mrs. Starr read the directions
aloud, even though we had the
printed test books in front of us
She told us the testers aren't al
lowed to memorize the instructions
They have to read them to be sure
every word gets across.
Before each new test edo not
| turn the page until you are told tc
| do so'o, we practiced and Mrs. Starr
walked around the table to see how
we were doing. The practice ones
didn't count. I wish they had. They
were easier.
The first test wasn't so bad. There
were pictures of scissors, wrenches
chisels and other working gadgets
II didn't recognize, all shaded diff
ferently. The idea was to pick out
the tool that was shaded in the same
way as one of five other similar
tools. If l. had done little better
in that one, I could have been a
paper hanger where shapes and
shades have to match
There were tests where we tapped
dots on paper, drew lines through
HIS without touching the vertical
bars of the letters and scratched
two vertical and one horizontal line
in hundreds of little boxes. At least
there were hundreds of little boxes
to have lines scratched on them. ]
think there is something thesmat-
ter with my eye-hand coordination
or perhaps / don't hold a pencil
right. My aiming wasn't so bad but
my motor speed made it clear I'd
never be much good as a machine
tender.
Arithmetic Comes Up.
wasn't the only one who groaned
when Mrs. Starr told us to turn the
page and the arithmetic test came
up. You try adding, dividing, mul-
tiplying and subtracting at top speed
and see how many mistakes you
make. Or try it at low speed, the
way I did. Suddenly, I couldn't ne
member how much was six times
seven. I was working my way up
from five times seven (if there's one
thing I do know, it's my fivesies)
when she called time.
Still, comforted myself, we didn't
have fractions or percentages to
worry about. I should have known
better.
Right after the five minute rest
perio6-and not a minute too soon
either, after 40 minutes of mental
effort-we moved in on the prob
lems. They would have been very
interesting, too, if I hadn't had to
solve them. They're geared to what
working people have to worry about
rent, overtime, how long it takes
to get to work and how many hours
so many workers can labor to turn
out so many pieces of work. I found
u hadn't crammed enough on my
multiplication.
On the one that tests clerical
perception. I improved, but only
slightly. Two sets of firm names
were listed beside each other and
we had to determine at a glance if
they we're the same or different
For instance. there was Brown and
Browne. That's the sort of thing
we got on the practice test. On the
real test, there were long names with
a lot of letters that looked alike but
weren't. Many of them we're Wash
ington firm names. If you're good
at this, you can do clerical work or
proofreading where quick visual
comparisons are required.
I also draw some small comfort
from the word test. On that one,
we were given four words at a time
to determine whether we could spot
two that had the same meaning or
exactly opposite meanings. / only
made one mistake. I don't know
why / thought abridged" and 'ex-
purgated' were word fellows.
Spatial Aptitude a Serious Matter.
Spatial aptitude is something !
haven't got much of. This is just as
serious as 1t sounds. They gave us
two tests just to make sure. One of
them pictured fat pieces of metal.
Beside each picture were set OF
objects. one of which was supposed
to be the same piece of metal after
1t had been bent or rolled into shape.
The other test was a mess of lettered
and figured shapes which We were
supposed to match. / looked at
triangles, rectangles, quadrangles,
squares and circles till I felt as II