I’ve been teaching GRE preparation classes off and on for the last year or so, and my students are usually really tense and unhappy about taking the test.  I spend a lot of time trying to reframe the significance of the test for them–it’s nice to do well, but it’s not a particularly fair/accurate test, and your grades/research/letters of recommendation are MUCH more important–and I try to be sympathetic about how it feels to be a good student who’s striking out a big test.  But, really, I’m generally a pretty good test-taker, even when I don’t really know what I’m doing, so my ability to identify with my poor students has maybe been a little impaired.

But now, I’ve taken the General Science: Content Knowledge Praxis, and it turns out that, even after several months of studying, I don’t possess a lot of science content knowledge.  I have just the haziest understanding of the periodic table and almost no information about the properties of specific elements.  I don’t know any of the formulas I need to calculate anything.  I’m still really confused about the difference between meiosis and mitosis.  A lot of times, I didn’t even understand what the question was asking.

How on earth am I going to TEACH this stuff?

Granted, I’m supposed to be teaching middle school science and I took the general (not middle school) exam.  But, what if I end up teaching high school chemistry or something?  What would I DO?

I feel like I need to enroll in multiple science classes *right now.*  How I would pay for that (or fit it into my schedule) is a mystery, but oh my god.  I know nothing.