----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, January 24, 2011 7:06 AM
Subject: MCI Exam - Definitions 2
Walter & Group...
[GH] Walter Simberski clarifies his position :
Gordy,
I see I have allowed my "foot in the mouth" affliction to show. Thanks for pointing it out and allowing me to
correct myself. First of all I have yet to meet an examiner I didn't like and I have probably met more examiners
than the average master :) ...
Every one who has administered a test I've taken has given the clear impression that they want me to
pass as much as I want to pass.
Examiners have a tough task - they want every candidate to pass but they have to maintain certain
standards or the program will lose credibility. One of the ways they can ensure that the candidate has
not only memorized the correct definitions but has thought about them in detail and discussed them
with other instructors and instructor candidates is to ask probing questions on various topics such as
their understanding of a definition or the key elements of one of the required tasks. I think any good
examiner is going to have some of these probing questions in their back pocket. Some of them will
come from their experiences as they made the journey from novice to examiner and some will come
as a result of ongoing discussion and experience.
Candidates also have a difficult situation. The test is a culmination of thousands of hours of practice
and study and they may have incurred significant expense to take the test. Even the best prepared
candidate is going to experience some butterflies. Sometimes a candidate's reaction to a question
is more important than the actual answer they give.
It should come as no surprise that misunderstandings occur and errors happen but I can honestly say
that any time that I didn't pass it was entirely due my shortcomings - not the fault of the examiners.
Getting back to the idea that a scientist can likely poke holes through any definitions we create - I used
to think that we should adopt some definitions from physics or engineering verbatim and stop trying
to redefine them. These definitions come at centuries of introspection by the scientific community
and should be bullet proof. As time has gone on I have taken a 180 degree reversal on that. If a word
has specific meaning to us as fly casting instructors then we should make sure we have a well understood
definition for that word. If the word is something we use in technical discussions and has no additional
meaning then we should use the accepted definition.
A case in point is "load". In engineering terms load is the amount of force exerted on an object.
I could blather on at length about this but to a fly casting instructor it would be mostly useless. As
fly casting instructors we are concerned about the bend in the rod and what this means to fly casting
so I think it is right for us to define "load" as the bend in the rod. If a scientist pokes holes in this I'm
not too concerned.
I think we need to nail down definitions like this so we don't get caught up in trivial discussions such
as, "Is it possible to bend the rod without loading it?", and to move on to discussions that build
the body of knowledge of the FFF fly casting instruction program using these key words we identify.
Not being privy to what the definitions committee is doing I can't comment on how well they are
doing their chosen task but I do wonder if they have bitten off more than they can chew. Perhaps they
could start with a small subset of the definitions?
Cheers
Walter
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[GH] Walter, I know you well enough to understand what you meant..... Just didn't want any of our Group to get the wrong impression. Especially our MCI candidates.
Our Glossary Committee has worked on a limited subset of definitions. As that gets expanded, one finds that some of the original ones have to be changed so they don't conflict with new ones. An ongoing challenge.
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