Tests may be the most unpopular part of academic life. Students hate them because they produce fear and __26__ about being evaluated, and a focus on grades instead of learning for learning's sake.
But tests are also valuable. A well-constructed test __27__ what you know and what you still need to learn. Tests help you see how your performance __28__ that of others. And knowing that you'll be tested on __29__ material is certainly likely to __30__ 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 __31__ your worth as a person. If you do badly on a test, you may be tempted to believe that you've received some __32__ 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're a bad person or stupid. Or that you'll never do better again, and that your life is __33__. 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.
__34__, 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 _35__ measures of what we know.