Hi all. My name is Bryan. I first want to thank all of you. This site, the moderators and visitors comments, knowledge and information on this site and forum are tremendously valuable and rewarding!
Second, I'm really depressed, confused and reaching out, because I feel bamboozled lol. Basically, I have been studying for the SCJP6 for months! At least 8 months. I prepared using the Bates/Sierra SCJP6 book, I signed up with Whizlabs and took practice
test and paid for a virtual training course, I took practice test on the Enthuware site, gathered tons of notes and references on line and programming is not new to me. I have a B.S. in Computer Science and I code in
Java almost everyday writing automation code...
Ok, with all that said, yesterday was my big day and I felt really prepared. I was ready to take the 1Z0-851 exam. I took the test closest to home at an official Pearson View testing center. It was Hayward Adult School (Hayward, CA). The facilities were adequate, very quite, and the administrator was a very nice and polite lady. During my test, I tried to be strategic about answering the questions: easy ones first, then harder ones, then try to tackle any no ideas last. I utilized the "Review" for later functionality of the exam, and clicking the "Mark" checkbox to help me keep track of questions. During the test, when I clicked a Mark checkbox, a javascript error occurred. (I could not write down the message because you are not allowed to have anything to write with lol) I thought it would go away if I clicked the yes button hoping the page would recover, but the page reloaded blank, and when I tried to move forward to the next question, the test was frozen. I notified the administrator. She said she had never seen that before and said the test would have to be reset. So she reset the computer and the exam recovered exactly where I left off. The good news is no data was lost and I could continue with no time lost. However, this javascript error happened 3 more times! My guess is the the Mark checkbox when clicked on or off for certain question types causes the error. The administrator had to reset my test 4 times! She said that had never happened before.
Then, during finalizing review questions, the test crashed! A white page loaded and a message to the reference of "The test system is unavailable. Please restart the test. Email
[email protected] blah blah blah" (not exact
string that displayed on screen, and I couldn't write it down, but something of this reference). The administrator said she had never seen that before and said she had to call the "test center technical support" and I may have to retake the test at another time. She was on hold for at least 15 minutes! As I sat idle, I was left wondering, are all my answers still there? lol. Finally, she got off the phone and said the technician told her to restart the machine. With our fingers crossed, the machine rebooted and the test recovered successfully. That was a relief.
I had finished reviewing all questions and felt pretty good about my answers. I finished the exam at 5:00 p.m. The test started at 2:00 p.m. She told me the results would arrive via email. I rushed home to check my email. When I opened it and proceed to the Oracle site, I could not believe the heartbreak I saw...it said my score was %26. I started crying. So many things went through my head. I felt I let my family down, I felt I would never progress in in my career as an engineer, I felt dumb, incompetent of passing this test. I recalled all the time that passed studying for this test. I felt dumb.
Then I realized 26% is like saying I only got like 15 or 16 questions right. I'm not that dumb. I've been studying and preparing for this test for a while. Now Oracle or Pearson Vue does not provide you with your results (Or do they?) How can I feel certain this was the correct results, especially after 4 javascript errors during the test all resulting in system resets, plus a test crash also resulting in system reset?
Sorry for all the elaboration and details but something doesn't feel right. What should I do? What would you do? Should I ask for the results? Should I at least ask for a refund? Hell, should I even take this thing again? The support and experience is terrible...I'm just looking for some advice, honesty, some encouragement even. I woke up today confused about goals and working hard, and planning. This is a bad experience.
Thanks so much everyone.
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