IT IS DONE.

The license exam, I mean. And I passed, which means I am now a duly licensed Florida Real Estate Sales Associate (again). And as usual, the exam was far less harrowing than the practice tests in the review manual.

I was mildly freaked out after doing the, oh, 600+ practice exam questions in the review book and not scoring my usual above 90%. (That isn't bragging - I've worked in real estate related business and real estate related law most of my working life and I SHOULD know this stuff.) 75 is a passing grade on the state exam, and on the two practice exams I took and scored, I had a 76 and an 81. Hardly scores that put one in the comfort zone, and definitely ego and confidence bruising. So I went over the questions I'd missed yesterday and this morning, and found that several were missed because I just flat misread the question, which was deliberately worded to be confusing, and a couple I still swear are written incoherently and there WAS no correct answer in the choices given, and a few more I honestly didn't know when I saw it for the first time but do now. But still, if those were meant to be representative of the state license exam, that didn't make me feel too confident when I sat down at the computer in the testing center. I wasn't panicky, I'm a good test-taker, but I wasn't all cocky and sure it'd be a breeze. All it would take would be for the computer to randomly spit out a handful of ambiguous or trivia-driven questions and I could be in trouble.

Once again, the real exam was nowhere near as difficult as the practice questions. The questions were shorter, less cutesy-tricky, and more based in reality than the practice stuff. We are given 3.5 hours to take the exam and I was done in an hour, including going back to review the questions I'd marked for a second look before I answered them. I wasn't too worried at that point, I had felt confident about the vast majority of my answers, but there is still that scary moment when you hit the complete button (When the lizard brain chatters: "You are being too confident! Are you SURE you don't want to read through the whole damn thing again? What if you fail because you didn't read 3 questions carefully enough?") but I figured anything I wasn't sure of would only make me more nervous staring at it longer, and then there's the risk of over-thinking and changing a right answer to a wrong one. So, it was time for FIDO. One of the best things I got from the Goal Setting: 13 Secrets of World Class Achieversbook: Fuck It, Drive On. (I think in the book he called it "Forget It, Drive On" but said he got it from an ex-Marine, so I'm pretty sure my version is the proper one.)

So I declared it done and hit the complete button. Click. Done. I didn't get an instant on-screen confirmation that I'd passed - I had to wait while the test center gal walked me out and then pulled up the certificate on her computer. PASS. WOOT! I'm finally getting back to work.