The proctor had already arrived, strolling around and observing each examinee, seemingly checking whether anyone had brought cheating tools.

A young man by the window kept wiping his sweat.

A woman in the first row was anxiously tapping her foot on the floor.

A man in the corner of the last row was vigorously slapping his eyes and face.

Alan Cooper could clearly sense a faint smell of gunpowder and tension filling the air in the room. Looking at the classroom, which was only half full, he let out a shallow breath, calmed his nerves, clenched his fists as if in prayer, and muttered to himself: Finally, the day has come. Whew, I hope the Administrative Aptitude Test is a bit easier, please!

Chapter 8: Copy Someone Else’s Test Paper!

The Administrative Professional Ability Test, abbreviated as the Administrative Aptitude Test.

It refers to a standardized exam specifically designed to assess a series of psychological potentials related to success in administrative professions. It is different from general intelligence tests, and also different from tests of public basic knowledge or specific professional skills. Its main purpose is to predict the likelihood of examinees achieving success in various administrative positions by testing a series of psychological potentials. This exam measures abilities formed through years of life, study, and practice; its nature is a test of fundamental latent abilities.

It is a closed-book exam, with about 135 multiple-choice questions.

Morning, 9:00–11:00, two hours of exam time.

In Exam Room 026, after the proctor finished reading the exam rules and important notes, the test began. In the almost frozen air, rustle, rustle, rustle—the test papers, answer sheets, and scratch paper were handed out to each examinee. Alan Cooper touched the crisp white test paper, his heart in his throat. Please be easy, please be easy.

Lowering his head and picking up his pen, he began to answer the questions.

First question—huh, he’d seen a similar one in a civil service exam prep book he bought at Xidan Book Building. Easy.

Second question—uh, there was a similar one in the second Jiangnan Province civil service exam three years ago. Also easy.

Third question—after pondering for ten seconds, he happily chose C. Also not hard.

Fourth question—he tapped his pen on the scratch paper and finally chose B. Although he wasn’t completely sure, he was pretty close.

Getting through four questions so smoothly put Alan Cooper in a great mood. He felt that this set of questions really wasn’t that hard. He wrote and answered, but before he could be happy for long, starting from the sixth question, the difficulty shot up. From questions six to ten, Alan Cooper didn’t know a single one and could only guess. From question thirty-three to forty-seven, he was also half-guessing, half-random, with no confidence at all.

This was undoubtedly a very dangerous sign.

The further he went, the heavier Alan Cooper’s heart became, thumping hard.

It was just too hard—seemed even more complicated than last year’s national civil service exam!

The quantitative reasoning questions were still manageable. Alan Cooper had just graduated from college, so he hadn’t forgotten much of the knowledge. He could solve almost all of them, and his accuracy should be high. The verbal comprehension and expression questions were about the same; after some thought, he figured he could get most of them right. But the logic and general knowledge questions were way too hard this time. Out of dozens of questions, he thought he’d be lucky to get even half right. The most notable were the data analysis questions—he figured he couldn’t answer a single one correctly!

It’s over, it’s over! I’m screwed!

Alan Cooper felt his head was about to explode and really wanted to curse out the test makers.

Twenty minutes passed.

Forty minutes passed.

With fifteen minutes left in the exam, many people in Alan Cooper’s exam room had already put down their pens. Some stared blankly at the ceiling in confusion, some grabbed their hair and gritted their teeth in frustration, some covered their faces in silence, most looking pained and agitated. It seemed hardly anyone was satisfied with their answers.

Alan Cooper felt he couldn’t wait any longer. Otherwise, this one Administrative Aptitude Test would make him fail just like most people.

He pulled himself together, took out a 2B pencil, and started shading the answer sheet, marking several obvious signs on the questions he wasn’t sure about or couldn’t answer. Counting them up, there were about forty or fifty such questions. As for the other eighty or so multiple-choice questions, he was at least seventy percent confident he got them right.

“Hm? What are you drawing?” A balding middle-aged proctor walked over to Alan Cooper.

Alan Cooper glanced at the clock, took a deep breath—here goes!!

Seeing his answer sheet covered in messy marks, the proctor frowned and said, “Don’t draw boxes all over the answer sheet. If you do that, how will the machine read it? Hurry up and erase them!”

Alan Cooper didn’t reply. Instead, he suddenly stood up from his chair. Under the stunned gazes of all the examinees and proctors, he grabbed his answer sheet with his left hand, dashed forward, pushed past the balding proctor, and rushed out of the classroom!

“What the heck! Where’s he going?”

“Who knows! Is this guy crazy?”

“Stop! You stop right there! The exam isn’t over yet!”

Everyone was dumbfounded, not understanding why this person suddenly ran out of the exam room. Did he realize he couldn’t pass and just give up?