Life can have so many challenges a person will have to endure. Some will be making it to the NBA playoffs and others will be perfecting the cheesecake. For me, it would be the most, terrified thing a young person would ever have, the SAT. Know for its extremely dull black and white pages and its rigorously rough questions, I was about to prove myself against its makers, The College Board. Opening my eyes, I was greeted by the bright, shiny sun peeking through the curtains.
Getting up | noticed my calendar overfilled with Post-it notes, but there was a bright tomato, red color one, it was something important written as, “SAT Today”. My brain shifted into gears, I quickly sprang out of bed and dashed to my trusty backpack, rambling through past-due homework, I found my SAT study flash cards, smudged with red finger prints from Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and the corners bent as a crowbar. I rapidly looked upon them as if my eyes were stuck to them. After what seemed like just a second, my mother screamed at me like a siren and told me | was late for the test.
Swiftly put on my old, blue torn jeans that seemed like they had gone to war and headed towards the crowded driveway. I jumped in my trusty, rusty Chevrolet pickup and hold in the 1980’s red cloth seats and drove off in a blast. Arriving to school, I took note of the humongous fleet of cars piled up, people on bikes and others were just walking towards the main entrance. This only just made me tremble like an airplane taking off with anxiety. After sitting in the truck for a minute or so, calming myself down to Kanye West’s “Stronger” song, I was ready to conquer my enemy. I stepped inside.
With the library full of students, ranging from overly-prepared over achievers with their expensive $50 plus SAT prep textbooks with the newest and coolest calculators, to the people who were forced to come here, to the people with nothing more than a sharped yellow pencil. Despite the looks of it, I was terrified to even sit down, however due to time, I had no other choice. Sitting down on the intense artic cold blue seat. I shrived immensely, worried that my desk was having an earthquake. After calming down and positioning myself at an angle away from where the icy cold air was coming from, I was ready.
The instructor was having trouble opening the little red plastic tab in which you pull up to get access to the booklet, but after a while, we began to open them, some people had more trouble than others and, I was so anxious, my hand couldn’t stop rambling, almost unable to hold my paper. After starting, all I could hear were small, almost silent cries of surprise, others were with the flimsy pages, turning them back and forth and back again, almost sounded like a bird flapping its wings in a windy day, and the rest were pressing on their calculators, if you paid enough attention, you can make some sort of an upbeat melody.
After ignoring all distractions, I managed to get some easy algebra questions, I thought to myself, other than its dull boring appearance, it is not that bad. I fastened my bright yellow, Dixon Ticonderoga pencil into my hand and marched on. After the Math portion of the SAT, I went on to the reading section, where I would read an extremely boring story story on, why shoelaces are the most important invention today. Flipping back and forth through the pages like a fan, I thought to myself, I did quite well.
After finishing up my essay, I looked at my Fossil watch and saw Thad 3 whole minutes’ worth of free time. I checked my essay over and over again, checking for grammar, diction and even making sure it wasn’t too sarcastic. Then I heard a loud voice coming from behind me, I twisted my head around and it was a teacher screeching about how time was up and I needed to close my booklet. Without thought, I dropped my pencil and closed the test, however when the pencil had hit the wooden, aged desk, it bounced off into the toes of the teacher.
It was like a thousand-yard stare, I froze, she stared, and everyone else seemed to stop. I extended my arm as fast as I could, snatched it from the between of her musty toes and looked down as nothing would of happen. Later, we were finally dismissed from the torment, I was glad, but however anxious about my score. Two slow weeks later. I had checked my email, scrolling through the excessive coupons of Macys, Hugo Boss, and Armani, I saw in big bold letters, “SAT SCORES.
My internet having speed of 500 Mbps, it was lightning fast but not enough to control the anticipation. With sweaty palms, I typed in my ridiculously long username and password. Glazing my eyes across the page until I found the magic number of a 25. Jumping and screaming, almost knocking down my MacBook, I seemed like if I was the smartest person alive. Reminiscing to myself, I have found that the SAT isn’t much of a hard test, but however, the anxiety, the fear, the perception of time is really what frighten us like coming home and finding your front door unlocked.
If I would do it all over again, I would study more productivity, rather than just watching Dexter on Netflix and munching on popcorn with having the SAT study book as a coaster, probably ask for help with those intense trigonometric function problems and most certainly, I would wear comfortable clothes. Despite its thickness of the one compared to The Bible and it’s boring questions, it is just a test. I did my best and in the end, that is what really matters.