Doing a lot of reading

I've been doing a lot of reading, or trying to anyway. 

Someone gave me a test and I failed. I just stared at it without a clue how to answer it, without a clue of how to even start to answer it, and this is after I did do some reading. I guess I am not as smart as I thought I was. Or not smart enough to play with the big dogs. I just hate it when my stupidity gets the better of me. Since then, I've been so conscious of my work, my speech, my grammar, and my writing. How do I improve that? I have to be able to play with the big dogs, to know that I can, and to trust that if it came to that I can hold my own. I was just flummoxed by that test. I haven't felt that helpless since my International Tax Law exam and even that I managed to pull together some answers and they appeared to be the right answers, some of them anyway. Hopefully, the answers I gave this time happen to be correct.