winging it

I have to take these assessment tests next, so that my adviser will be able to adequately advise me.  Tomorrow, reading and 'righting.  Wednesday, 'rithmatic.  There's an online sample of the test, so that I can gauge how I'd do.  Brush up on how to solve for x, if I need to.  I may not be able to wing math the same way, but I can still wing it well enough to throw off a test like this.

Not only didn't I make it through high school, but of everything I did learn, my memory is swiss cheese.  How many degrees must a triangle have again?  Dammit, I should know this at least.  90, 180, 270, but definitely not some random number like 175.  So I look at a question like this, 

The measures of two angles of a triangle are 35° and 45°.  What is the measure of the third angle of the triangle?  

A. 95°  
B. 100°  
C. 105°  
D. 110°

and just learned the answer to my question must be 180° given that 35+45=80, the only sensible answer to their question is B. 100° 

This is what I mean, by winging it.  Reducing questions to simple arithmetic and logical deduction.  Because it's multiple choice, sometimes the wrong answers give away the right one, or at least provide a good guess.  Often single digits, which I can estimate in my head without knowing anything other than what the symbols mean.  Not all these specific mathematical formulas that I don't remember, or never learned in the first place, because school was the same way.

I understand that college will be different, and I'll have to learn these things properly, regardless of the assessment.  I have to start all the way at the beginning in areas like math.  I think intermediate college level algebra or so.  If all goes well, I'll be at this for years, before I even get to doing anything more interesting, but part of my resolve has been an acceptance of that.  Used to be unimaginable to me, thinking that far ahead.

I'm nervous about these tests, in any case.  My technique for doing better than I should is unreliable.  This means I could also do terribly, unlike if I actually knew this stuff. Starting with non-credit courses just to catch up would not only suck for obvious reasons, but because at the very least, I know I can learn basics very quickly, on my own.  Give me five minutes in Google and I'll figure out what any other squiggly little symbols mean, too.  Not to prodigious mastery or anything, but enough to find the material appropriately difficult.

Especially since I'm only going part time for my first semester, giving me enough free time should I need it.  Then if that goes well, full-time, because I don't want to spend the next ten years learning elementary crap.  That was awful enough the first time.  I'm not concerned that my courses will be too hard at first, but too easy.  Too elementary.  

My resolve also involves being prepared to gut that out, but I'm nervous about the possibility it could all turn out much harder than expected, too.  I don't know how prepared for that I am.  It's a community college.  I can't even imagine it.  Just have to ace whatever they throw at me, so that I can use it to get me into a real college.

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(update, scored 224 out of 240 on linguistics, so yeah, I'm fine in that area.  I'd have gotten a perfect score, but the test was wrong on a few of them.)