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Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Test Anxiety and the Zen of Motorcycle Riding | The Classroom Sooth

Test Anxiety and the Zen of Motorcycle Riding | The Classroom Sooth

Test Anxiety and the Zen of Motorcycle Riding

Since 2009 I have spent my summers riding an orange and cream colored scooter round Chicago. She purred and zipped and zoomed and so was dubbed “Sneaky Cheetah.”

Alas, she didn’t make it to her third July 4th and so I took it upon myself to trade the Sneaky Cheetah for a cool looking motorcycle, which I got from a buddy of mine. The motorcycle, however, is an animal of a different nature, as scooters don’t have a clutch, or a shifter, and for the Sneaky Cheetah, I didn’t even need the special “M” Class license in Illinois to ride it. I decided I needed to take a motorcycle riding course.

I took the course this past week. We were six students and one instructor over two days: In the morning we were in a classroom learning bike basics and road safety, and both afternoons were spent “in the field” learning how to operate a motorcycle. On the third morning there was the “M class” licensing test, administered by an