The SAT.

Every high schooler must encroach upon its uncharted territory eventually and dive straight into the practice tests, review classes and study sessions. I think the reason we all dread the SAT so much (besides the 4-and-a-half-hour brain-numbing experience in which around the seventh section, you start to consider colleges which don’t require SAT scores) is because we realize college is coming full-speed ahead.

This thought tantalized me as I parked my car (very poorly) and walked into the unfamiliar high school’s courtyard. Nervous students littered the yard, neither talking to each other nor making eye contact. A couple of confident test takers wore Stanford sweatshirts, as though they could channel the pure brilliance of the college through the red fabric and into their brains. One boy sits nervously next to his dad on a bench, nervously clenching his jaw. I stood off to the side to double check my items: pencils, ID, registration form, calculator and snack. As I pulled my pink calculator out of my bag, a girl standing a few feet away went frighteningly white and sprinted out of the courtyard.

More students trickled in, looking tired but antsy. Sooner than you’d think, a teacher gathered us and we filed into our assigned classroom and residence for the next 4 hours. Students began to sit and bits of conversation floated through the room. “I brought 100 pencils so I’d get a 100%.” “I think my calculator just died.” “I didn’t study a single minute.” “I’ve been studying for 2 years.” “There was 9 shots of espresso in my coffee this morning.”

Our moderator distributes our answer sheets and test booklets and has just begun the opening instructions when a boy trips into the room, looking frantic and completely out of breath. The teacher coolly dismisses him, adding another layer of tension to the room. Suddenly, I’m terrified that my phone will ring, my calculator will die and I’ll somehow set my test on fire. But I must push these fears aside because the moderator is directing us to open our test books to page 1. The class takes a deep collective breath. “You may begin.”