Chapter Seven-How To Master Thematic Apperception Test
This chapter will help you gain useful insights into how a story is evaluated and how a story needs to be written in the Thematic Apperception Test.
Chapter 7: Analysis Of Third Story
In this seventh chapter, we will analyse this story written by an ACC candidate on the image in chapter 4.
Story-Ram, 48 years old school principal told students not to protest, get back to class. He saw some students of class XI and XII did protest for students welfare. He asked the students about their demands. The students told of books, labs, infrastructure in class and sports teacher also. The principal told them that he worked on the demand. He consult with the teacher and also asked the higher authorities. He arranged books as soon as possible, new blackboards, repair bench and new bench and also arrange for the labs and chemicals for reaction for the school funding. He also hire a retired soldier for the physical of students. With the facilities and the hard work of students, they got good marks in exams.
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Let us analyse this story in a systematic manner.
First thing, there are grammatical mistakes in the story. Second thing, there is lot of cutting and rewriting which will not help. Any kind of cutting or rewriting shows that you cannot work smoothly under stress. Your brain cannot function smoothly under stress. So that is not a good thing but let us analyse this story bit by bit.
To start with, the story is outrightly disastrous. Let us see why in a point-by-point manner.
First thing is that the very start of the story is in a very poor manner. The way the candidate has written about principal told students, it literally makes it look like watching a movie which has already been played 30 to 40% and we are watching it from somewhere in the middle. The start is a very haphazard type. The candidate made an effort to bring the theme in the very first line but the way he ended up doing that is extremely poor and will bring his effective intelligence and power of expression into question.
Then the next thing is the way the candidate has mentioned about multiple problems. Upon being asked by the principal, he has mentioned about books, labs, infrastructure in class and also sports teacher. Now this is something very important for every candidate to understand. The moment you bring in multiple problems in a story, the story is bound to fail. Reason being, if you bring in multiple problems, then you possibly cannot write the solution to each of those problems within the allotted time and if you don’t address each of those problems after having mentioned it, then again it raises a question as to what about that problem. It leaves the story incomplete and this kind
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of an incomplete story will always leave the benefit of doubt with the board and not the candidate.
The next thing which is very weird is the way the candidate has just mentioned about how the principal called one teacher and just told him to get everything resolved by telling him to get books, new blackboard, repair bench, labs, & chemicals. Literally every responsibility was given to the teacher. By doing this, the candidate has missed out on the opportunity to show his own problem-solving skill. Through the story, the board wants to check your own skill but by assigning all the work to one teacher and getting rid of it that way, the candidate has simply failed to show his own skill and work sense. Second problem with this kind of an approach is that he leaves the room open for creating a misunderstanding that if commissioned then in the future he will go on to become the kind of officer who will never do work himself and will just be asking the Havildar Saab or Subedar Saab to do work on his behalf.
Ideally, the candidate should pick up one single problem and write very systematic four to six steps which he himself will take to solve the problem or behind which he will be the driving force. By just writing one step that he called the teacher and just left it to him to resolve the issue, the candidate has missed the opportunity to show his own work sense and problem-solving skill. So, this story is very useful in terms of learning for other candidates. It helps us understand why a candidate should never write about multiple problems in the story and even lot of other things. Rather, the candidate should select one problem and construct a story around it.
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In the next chapter, we will take a look at how this particular story could have been written in a different manner to make it more acceptable to the board.
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