SPHR jitters --9 weeks prior

On my road to procrastinate even further and squander what's left of my 9 weeks of study for my SPHR certification, I found some old and new statistic concerning the test. The passing rate for the past 6 exam periods has been on a pretty good steady decline since 2010: 50%, 52%, 48% x 3,  47%.

Additionally, I found some rather... interesting numbers that I am not sure how to take. From Aug 2012 to Aug 2013, an additional 634 new people got their SPHR certification. With a passing rate of 47%, that means about 1,349 applied, and 715 failed. That blew a whole lot of wind out of my sails. For many reasons. 1) The obvious of, dear Lord, more than half the people failed! and 2) if there are over 800k HR professionals in the US alone (the certification also counts internationally), why are there so few being added to the field?

The stories of people who take the SPHR are mixed; some say they passed it on their first try with little study and lots of cramming the week prior, whereas others spend the whole $800+ for the semi-official study material and fail it time and time again.

But it's all done. My application was thankfully approved and I'm good to go. Now to kill all the butterflies in my stomach and schedule the exam for Dec. 16.

Weather's been nice and cold around here, so grabbing a blanket and hunkering down with some flashcards, notes, and sample test questions.