Tov tov lehodos!

Due to a combination of stupidity and slow trains I missed my smicha test today. The stupidity was all mine; for some reason I believed the Rabbi when he said my group had a possibility of getting tested tonight or on Monday, so I only planned on getting back to Motown at 7:30 or so. As it happened the testing went much faster than expected, and I was still on the train when my group went in. Is there any specific reason why every single station had to be stopped at? So you may ask, "Where does the stupidity come in?" The answer is that it's just stupid to think you can waltz into yeshiva half an hour before a test and ace it, so even if my plan had worked out I would have looked like a fool. Fortunately someone arranged to switch with me, and there I was, ready to take the test at 6:00. Except that we were told that the test would commence at 7:15. After not having an appetite for supper caused me to shun the supper spread, I meandered up to the testing room and proceeded to do some quick cramming. As the appointed time passed the room filled with its complement of six sacrificial students, and once the Rabbis came in we were ready to get tested. Rabbi Yeruslavsky's first question, which we had been warned he asked at every test, was, "By saying what do you violate the prohibition of baal tosif?" By the time I got my first question, four down the line, they had become significantly harder. I answered the first in relatively good time; fortunately I had written down the opinions of the Shach and Taz in my shulchan oruch, but I didn't want it to look like I was just reading my notes, so I looked in the Shach for ten seconds, read half a note, did the same for the Taz, and so on down the line. Worked like a charm.
They always say that in a group oral test you always know everyone else's answers perfectly, and this was really brought out the next time the guy sitting next to me was asked a question. He totally blanked, and began to frantically flip his shulchan oruch in a desperate attempt to find the answer. I calmly hit my pencil repeatedly on the correct Ramah until he noticed what I was doing and read it off. My next question dealt with cucumbers, and once I had dealt with that I thought of appropriate to begin writing down the questions so that I would remember them for y'all, my faithful readers. I then realized that it looked like I was writing the answers for the guy sitting on the other side of me, so I ceased and desisted, which means I can't provide you with the full report you deserve.
At about this time Rabbi Chaim Schapiro took a bunch of smicha certificates out of a UPS envelope and Rabbi Yeruslavsky began to sign the documents we'll be getting in a year from now. Once that was done, and we were just finishing up the fourth round of questioning, Rabbi Schapiro decided to show us off a little and subjected us to a fifth round, which is more than anyone else. In this one I totally blanked when asked a pretty simple query, "What is the machlokes mechaber and ramah regarding N'at bar N'at. Fortunately the rabbi managed to drag the correct answer out of me, and I escaped the test, and the cigarettes (for by this time Rabbi Y had lit up) with a kimat tov, which is very nearly good but not quite there. But the main thing is I survived it.
You know it's funny, because everyone said their own thing on what he would ask, and how he'd ask it, but in the end he didn't really follow anyone's assertion. After an hour we were up, and that was that. And I'm so tired that I'll say the same.