The Draft

A short instrument that assigns you a subject you are unlikely to enjoy — the fallback route for Assessment 3, for people who cannot name a stall.

Six forced choices. It assigns you the opposite of what you answer. This isRoute B forAssessment 3, and it is the lesser route on purpose.

Read this before you use it

The target that tests what this course claims is a subject youstalled on and still need — started, stopped, restarted and stopped again. This instrument cannot find that for you, because only you know where you stopped.

What it can do is take the choice away from someone who genuinely cannot name a stall, which is worth something: people asked to nominate a subject they find hard reliably nominate one they secretly suspect they would be good at. Both routes carry the same marks. The feedback on this one will say which of the two questions it answered — does the mechanism survive material I have no appetite for is a real question, and a different one from does it get me past a wall I have already failed at.

It is not a psychometric instrument and we are not going to pretend otherwise. It has two axes, six questions and one rule, all printed on this page, and it will give the same answer every time.

The instrument

A page you have to get through. Which is worse?
You are explaining something you understand well.
Which mistake would embarrass you more?
The exam is next week and you are behind.
Someone hands you a table of exceptions.
Which is the better compliment?

Answer all six and your draw appears here. Without JavaScript, count your own answers and read the rule below — it is four lines.

The rule

Three questions ask whether you would rather work in notationor in prose. Three ask whether you would ratherderive from a few rules or memorise a lot of particulars. Take the majority on each axis, flip both, and that is your draw. Three questions per axis, so there is no tie to break and no discretion anywhere in it.

The four draws

If you prefer notation, and deriving from a few rulesMedieval Latin palaeography
Prose all the way down, and almost nothing derives. You learn hands, abbreviations and scribal habits one at a time, and the only way to read the next manuscript is to have read enough of them. Nothing here can be worked out from first principles, which is exactly the move you said you reach for.
If you prefer notation, and holding a lot of particularsMoral philosophy
No notation to hide behind and nothing to memorise that will save you. The work is constructing an argument and then defending it against the best version of the objection, in prose, where being right is not the same as being able to show it.
If you prefer prose, and deriving from a few rulesOrganic chemistry
Notation you cannot read aloud, and a mountain of particulars — reagents, conditions, the reactions that look identical and are not. There are principles underneath, and they will not spare you the memorising, which is the part you said you would rather route around.
If you prefer prose, and holding a lot of particularsMathematical statistics
Symbols throughout, and knowing the results is worth very little: you are asked to derive them, and an examiner can tell instantly whether you did or recalled. The thing you are good at is the thing it does not reward.

Whichever you draw, the rest is unchanged: cut a coherent quarter, turn it into bosses, and run it. See week 10.