Tests may be the most unpopular part of academic life. Students hate them because they produce fear and 1 about being evaluated, and focus on grades instead of learning for learning's sake. But tests are also valuable. A well-constructed test 2 what you know and what you still need to learn. Tests help you see how your performance 3 that of others. And knowing that you'll be tested on 4 material is certainly likely to 5 you to learn the material more thoroughly. However, there's another reason you might dislike tests: You may assume that tests have the power to 6 your worth as a person. If you do badly on a test, you may be tempted to believe that you've received some 7 information about yourself from the professor, information that says you're a failure in some significant way. This is a dangerous—and wrong-headed—assumption. If you do badly on a test, it doesn't mean you are a bad person or stupid. Or that you'll never do better again, and that your life is 8 . If you don't do well on a test, you're the same person you were before you took the test—no better, no worse. You just did badly on a test. That's it. 9 , tests are not a measure of your value as an individual—they are a measure only of how well and how much you studied. Tests are tools; they are indirect and 10 measures of what we know.