Yesterday, I took a practice ACT, and it was horrific. It wasn’t that I didn’t know the answers (which I didn’t for many of them), but rather that being pidgeon-holed was suffocating. The room was hot, and I was in a room with people that refused to budge when it came to the breaks. Walking through the hallways to the exam room, I found the streams of people to be unaware of this conformity. They were content to be in groups, to be subject to this clear-defined society that we have where getting a good test grade is all that matters.
Granted, things have changed a lot from before, but a lot of it still remains the same. Often, the students with money and tutors do better, and in turn get to better colleges. I reside in a community with a lot of these cases, and it’s often pity-worthy because they don’t listen in class.
By about halfway through of the testing, the science portion, my brain was fried. I stared at the words and started to hum songs that I had been listening to that morning. Then, I tried again. Needless to say, I didn’t read most of the questions.
Then, there was my favorite part- the essay. This was where we were supposed to be free and express our opinions. When I was writing it, I thought about all of the topics they could have chosen besides college athletic scholarships. For example, what the student’s experience with Standardized Testing was. I would have loved that.
By the end, I had eaten my protein bar and drank about half of my bottle of water. The weather was cold, and when walking home, I had plenty of time to think about how tired my eyes were and how I couldn’t even recognize one of my classmates under the midday sun.
This wasn’t the first walk home where I felt the effects of testing. In June, after an intense night of rain, I walked home on the same route with a feeling of bliss and stupidity. I had registered for the wrong test, and in turn, left. (I wasn’t prepared to take the actual SAT, and I wasn’t going to waste 50 dollars taking it for practice.)
In conclusion, my experiences with standardized testing weren’t too good. Of course, there will probably be other experiences (I’m not done with high school yet), but these frustrating ones are the ones that I will remember.
Skies and Clouds 