this from the person who feels the need to correct my syntax...lol tough luck, youre smart and you'll bounce back

You probably did better than you think, OP. Sometimes studying too hard makes you much less sure of yourself - just don't freak out too much. Best of luck!

Sounds like every college test ever made.

You are in the navy aren't you? Didn't do so hot on the 2nd class exam? I know that feel. - FC3

What exactly did you study?

Do you know for sure what you got right? I thought for sure I flunked my state license exam but got 80%. You might have done better than you thought.

You're probably overthinking it

This sounds like the military exams I've taken to make the next rank. Studied for months and still didn't know half the answers.

OP here! Just to clarify, I'm an aircraft maintainer in the US Navy. To be honest, no I don't feel ready for promotion. The sad truth is that I simply have no talent for my job and don't even have the experience to make up for it. If you're in the military, or know anyone in the military, you know that often people get assigned long term duties that have nothing to do with their job title. In my case, I haven't worked on an aircraft in about two years. I'm actually trying to change my job in the Navy. Trouble is, changing your job in the Navy is basically applying for a new job, and if you haven't done well in your current job they won't accept you for a different job. So I have to get promoted in my current job that I'm not good at to be able to get a new job I would be good at. Ain't that a bitch? The good news is that now I'm back in my "real job" and if on the off chance I do get promoted I'll have nearly a year before I actually start in my new responsibilities so hopefully I can catch up. But why did I do so poorly on the test despite my intense studying? Well, the truth is that even though I've spent all my spare time in the past month studying my ass off, I still didn't study enough. That sounds crazy but the amount of material is just insane. It's literally thousands of pages. I should have started studying five months ago rather than one month ago. The reason I didn't start studying sooner is because I was busy with getting married and being transferred across the country during that time. I finally settled into my new home with my new husband a month ago and that's when I started studying. I hoped I'd be able to make up for lost time, but unfortunately even with my intense effort I just wasn't able to study the material thoroughly enough to be confident on the test. Another thing about this test, and anyone in the Navy will confirm it, is that a lot of those questions on the test are things that have absolutely nothing to do with your job and never come up in your work. That's one of the things that makes them so difficult and a poor basis for determining who should be promoted. But there were a few questions I knew because they had come up in my work. To avoid writing a convoluted FML, I simplified the situation. There were only three questions I knew because I studied. The other questions that I knew, I knew because I'd learned them on the job. For the most part, though, I just had to make educated guesses. It's just frustrating because I tried so hard and I don't think it really helped me much. But on the bright side, a lot of people come out of that test thinking they bombed out and then it turns out they qualified for promotion. That's actually what happened to me when I made my current rank. So, who knows? Maybe I'll get lucky. And if I don't make it, I'll take the test again in March and now I've got a pretty good head start because the material probably won't change much.

Study smart not hard.