Launch School: Assessments and Time Management
Launch School’s written assessments are grueling. The expectation is that you should be proving your mastery over the topic at hand, and that doesn’t come without a challenge.
When I clicked “Start the test” for Launch School’s JS229 course, I felt confident about taking it. I knew the concepts, I had coded along with the course, and I had even made flash cards to prepare for the assessment. So, why was my time running out?
Time management is an indispensable life skill, but it has a different flavor when you’re in a timed activity with a short-term lifespan.
An assessment only lasts a few hours, so using each minute of that wisely is critical. When you go over time on a Launch School assessment, that can have serious impacts on your grade — a full letter grade reduction (10%) to start with.
Why do Launch School Assessments have a time limit?
Let’s think about why there’s a time limit for Launch School’s assessments. Without understanding their purpose, time limits seem like a cruel and arbitrary constraint. However, when you understand the reasons that you’re being timed, it’s harder to feel like the test is stacked against you.
The time limit serves to show the Launch School instructors that you’ve achieved mastery. Launch School’s assessment rules stipulate that assessments are open book. You can access any notes, lectures, or documentation necessary during the course of the exam. Without a time limit, one could simply be able to look up every answer at test time, which would not demonstrate mastery of the course material.
The time limit gives you realistic preparation for job interviews. A potential employer is going to be much more impressed with a candidate who can budget time effectively during an interview. You will only have a set amount of time to show an interviewer why you’re the right candidate for the position, and making poor use of your time is not likely to help in this context.
Keep these reasons for the time limit in mind. In an unexpected way, the time limit is there to help you — not to give you another thing to worry about.
Why I, the author, went over time on JS229
You read that right. I took longer than the allotted time to complete the assessment. As soon as I submitted it, I slumped in my chair. Taking longer than the required time on an assessment is not something that I usually do, so I was feeling pretty poor about my performance.
I now have the opportunity to look at my performance post-mortem, with an unflinching, critical eye. If I understand as much as possible why I went over the time, I can plan how to do better in the future. I think there are a few reasons why I felt a time crunch on this assessment. Here are some of them in order from biggest to smallest.
The last thing I said to my partner before starting the assessment was “I don’t really feel like doing this.” If you hear yourself say these words, or catch yourself thinking them, stop what you’re about to do. Taking an assessment requires a clear, fresh mind. If you’ve had a rough day, or even if there’s something else you’d rather be doing, your attention will not be focused on the exam. Launch School is self-paced, and there’s no reason to take an assessment unless you’re feeling your absolute best about it.
I spent several days leading up to the assessment writing short essays for each prompt on the study guide instead of coding. I focused too much on the wrong type of material before taking the test. I’m glad to have studied the more conceptual aspects of object-oriented JavaScript because the clarity of my mental models was sharp. However, when it came time to produce sample code for the test, I found myself referencing notes and documentation more often than I should have. My study time would have been better spent writing the short essays and practicing generating object-oriented JS code examples leading up to the exam.
I hit a snag in my understanding on an early question and spent a lot of time trying to untangle it. When I ran into a question that didn’t make sense to me, I struggled with it for about twice as long as an average question. Not only did this make easier questions later in the test more difficult to answer in the allotted time, it shook my confidence in my understanding of the test material. Skipping questions that you can’t immediately see a path to solving makes sense for a lot of reasons. It loads the problem into your brain where your subconscious can take a whack at it, it allows you to build your confidence while answering easier questions, and any time you save can be directed toward the difficult questions at the end.
I accidentally closed the browser window with my assessment, started writing an email to support, and then realized that all I had to do was re-open the test. Part of taking the assessments is knowing how to take the assessment. What do you do if your internet goes out, or if you close the browser window my mistake? You certainly don’t want to be figuring these things out on the fly during the assessment if you should be so unfortunate as to have one of them happen to you.
Of course, there are probably other reasons. (Big shout out to the neighbor who decided it was a good time to honk their horn in the driveway for five minutes straight while I was on question 16). But the ones listed above are the ones I had the most control over and could have taken steps to correct.
How to manage assessment time more effectively in the future
If you’re not at your best, don’t take the assessment. This one should have been pretty obvious. It’s totally valid to not feel like taking a 3-hour written assessment. I probably should have given myself another day or two to practice more and feel absolutely confident and clear-headed before starting the assessment.
When studying for a written assessment, be prepared for conceptual and practical questions. I needed to be able to switch back and forth between writing code and explaining how it works seamlessly. I should have spent more time ahead of the test developing more muscle memory for object-oriented JS so that I didn’t have to refer back to my notes for the finer points of the necessary syntax.
Take a few minutes at the beginning of the exam to read all the questions. Doing this would have given me a better idea of the total amount of effort required for the exam. I could have paced myself better and made adjustments to my time management strategy with more information about the test.
Answer the easiest questions first. With the full scope of the test in mind, I could have built confidence while racking up easy points on the test. Any leftover time would be directed to the harder questions as necessary.
Slow down when reading the question. I can’t get full points on the question unless I answer all parts of it. I should read each question once, slowly, fully comprehending what is required as I go. It would save time compared to returning to the question multiple times.
Skip questions that are too difficult or confusing at first (after reading the prompt carefully). I shouldn’t waste spend time up front on a question I might not get full points on, anyway. This takes away valuable time from the questions I do know how to answer. Instead, return to the questions as time allows after I’ve answered the easier questions.
Be as concerned about having extra time as you are about running out of it. Having extra time at the end of the test isn’t proof that I’m a genius. It’s proof that I didn’t take as long as the test writers thought I should. If possible, I should take the extra time to go over my answers. I tend to lose easy points on obvious issues that I know how to avoid, like writing strings with apostrophes in single-quotes. Using end-of-test time to run all my code would help to take back a few points where I’d miss them for silly reasons.
Having poor time management can hamper your ability to get through an assessment, interview, or project. However, strategizing your plan of attack and developing time management skills can ease test anxiety and improve your overall performance. Using the strategies detailed above, I will be able to continue my studies with better time management on the assessments. I’m hoping that this will lead to an overall improvement in my test performance, and in demonstrating mastery over the topics covered in Launch School’s curriculum.
