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Standardized Tests are the Best (Or Not)

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Students endure the grueling hours of standardized tests
Students endure the grueling hours of standardized tests
Graphic by Caroline Wu '11

Entering junior year, I was a little wary—I had been warned of the excessive workload, the college stress, and worst of all, the standardized tests. However, I figured some of it was just over-exaggerated hype. It couldn’t be that bad.

The beginning of the year wasn’t too horrible. I staggered home with my 50-pound textbooks and shoved them away in a corner of my room.

I received the syllabi, the essays, the notes, the exams. It was kind of overwhelming, but definitely bearable.

And then came the standardized tests. The week of Oct. 12, I went to school Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Yes, Saturday.

I leaped out of my warm cozy bed at 7:15 that Saturday morning, so eager to spend 150 blessed minutes of my life at Staples taking the PSATs, as opposed to doing something pointless, such as sleeping.

The test was the most fun assessment ever—I got to do abstract math problems, fix up terrible sentences, spot errors, and, best of all, choose the most appropriate vocabulary word.

Cool how I’ve been skipping the SAT Question of the Day and Peterson’s Word of the Day for the last, I don’t know, four months? Gotta love those 300 unread inboxes.

What a joke.

At least I got to go out to lunch with other bright and cheery PSAT takers afterward.

However, my wonderful weekend didn’t end there.

Sunday is supposed to be the “day of rest.” However, instead of sleeping in, I woke up bright and early 8:00 am. Why? To take another test.

This time, a practice ACT.

The length?  240 minutes.

The number of sections?  Four plus writing.

The reaction? Screw college.

Who doesn’t love spending 45 minutes of their time reading assorted paragraphs about this dead artist or that trip to Vienna, and answering 75 questions, correcting the hundreds of mistakes the writers of the passages intentionally made?

Or how about taking 35 minutes to read some quality prose fiction, social studies, humanities, and natural science passages and bubble in some responses about those?

Or taking 35 more minutes out of my life to learn about this electromagnetic radioactivity experiment, or that gravitational velocity hypothesis, seven topics total, and pick some answers based on all that scientific gibberish?

And you can’t forget the 60 minutes on 60 lovely math problems—half of which left me stumped, half of which left me wishing I paid more attention in geometry.

If five students are waiting in line for their yearbook, do I really care how many different combinations they can stand in? Take a wild guess.

And the cherry on the ice cream sundae is the super-fun 30 minute writing section at the end, where I get to argue that class XYZ should be added to the high school curriculum, or that athletics should be banned in school, or some other subject where my response won’t actually make these ideas happen.

Overall, four hours well spent, no? The fun didn’t end there. The weekend after, I trekked up to Amity High School and, yes, you guessed it, took the real ACT.

Obviously, school during the week and standardized testing on the weekend—that is definitely the way to go.

I mean, who doesn’t love more grammar? And math? And reading? And science? And godforsaken writing?

And hey, if it didn’t go so great, then no big deal.

My friend and I already have our lives planned, with completely respectable jobs to boot.

She’ll be a manicurist. I’ll be a waitress.

I know from past experiences that waitressing is an extremely good workout, and I get paid to do it.

What more could I possibly want?

And the whole college part? Relatively unimportant.

My friend and I’ll just pick whichever television-advertised college has the best commercial.

Simple, easy, done.

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