Last week, I received my YKI test results in the mail after anxiously waiting for this moment for the past two months. The doorbell rang while I was in the middle of cooking, so I rushed to the door with my apron on to greet the much-awaited delivery man who had my crumpled YKI envelope scrunched in his hand. It was quite an unceremonious event. I immediately put the cooking to a halt and gently tore open the envelope containing the answers to my future.
Four 3’s. I passed all four subtests of the YKI test. I felt a mix of relief, confusion, and even a little disappointment. Relief, because I received the magic numbers good enough for Finnish citizenship, which I want to apply for one day. Confusion, because my scores in the various subtests didn’t match my subjective experience of my own performance. Disappointment, because I’m an overachiever, and I didn’t get a single 4 in any of the subtests — namely, the written portion.
Let me elaborate on my confrustration. (Apparently no word exists for the feeling of frustration that arises from confusion, so I’m officially coining a new term.*) I felt very prepared for the tasks given in the writing subtest and confident in my performance of all the writing tasks. On the other hand, it felt like I bombed the reading subtest — I didn’t have enough time to carefully read most of the articles, nor did I feel like I could process what I was reading under the time stress. It felt like I was guessing most of my answers for the reading portion. Although I’m glad that I didn’t flunk the reading portion (or any of the subtests), I was rather perplexed that the subtest I thought I performed best in and the subtest I performed worst in got stamped with the same score. It just didn’t seem to make sense, and that annoyed me.
After a week of processing my feelings and writing about them now, I can say I’m satisfied with my YKI test results. I know that a lot of foreigners dream of passing the intermediate YKI test, and I’m glad I passed on my first attempt. The YKI test is not something I would ever want to repeat again. Yet, I thought I would be more thrilled or excited upon passing it, as achieving this has been a long-term goal, but I guess I had already moved on and started a new chapter in my life while waiting for the results for the past two months.
The new chapter? Learning programming. Why? I decided I want to work in tech, and I’ve always wanted to develop my programming skills so I can make cool things for fun. After learning a language as difficult as Finnish, the challenge of learning a new programming language and making a career change doesn’t seem so scary. I already know I have the grit to make it. Learning Finnish taught me progress isn’t always visible nor linear, and there can be periods of feeling like you’re not making any progress before making a breakthrough or reaching a new milestone.
Also, I’m in no way implying that I think I have finished learning Finnish — my Finnish language journey will continue for at least as long as I live in Finland. Although I no longer have the goal of passing the YKI test to work towards, I want to continue to develop my Finnish skills, and I actually just started a new Finnish language class yesterday, which focuses on practicing speaking rather than grammar homework. At my current level, which is officially B1, I consider my Finnish language skills to be quite basic and full of imperfections. I like to joke that I’m fluent in broken Finnish but being able to speak even broken Finnish is still a big achievement.
In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing some study tips and other resources that helped me pass the YKI test.
*Further googling led me to the term “confrustion”, which is already being used in educational psychology research. But I like the way “confrustration” rolls off the tongue better. 🙂
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