Week 5 Prompt II

You go on a journey.

My father had determined that it was necessary for me to take the SAT's to enter EMCC, and I did not find out until I was already registered from an official at the college that the SAT's were unnecessary and would not do a thing for me at this point. I was half-disposed to not take them, as I had some trepidation.

My sister had taken the GED's, and had gotten ridiculously good scores on them, but the SAT's were a whole other species. They were much harder, and the study books I got said things like: "Go in with a target score. Say that you want a 1500. Then only attempt to answer 40 of the fifty problems." Then why the heck are there fifty if it is not for me to attempt them all? I went in with the mindset of attempting every problem unless I didn't have a good idea on how to solve it.

Originally, I had been scheduled as having the SAT in some place like Scarborough on the very border of Maine and New Hampshire, at nine in the morning. It was changed to Bangor High School. I was uncomfortable going there, but I entered, and received the number of the classroom I would take it in. I was one of the first ones there, and the moderator took my ticket, and checked my calculator to ensure that it was an acceptable model. We waited, and people came in, but about half of the classroom was still empty when we started, and the moderator guessed that a school bus of kids had not made it.

The desks were the worst I have ever experienced, in that the chair was attached to the table. This meant I could only squeeze into it from one side, and it made it difficult for me to sit comfortably. The chair only went halfway up my back, and via the attachment from the chair to the table on the right arm side I had virtually nowhere to rest my arm comfortably. I had the feeling that the chairs were designed for kindergartners.

We worked on the SAT's, and I was pleased with the rapidity with which I was able to do the work, in spite of the uncomfortable situation. Instead of leaving off ten questions like the books suggested, I would go all the way through, answering every single one, and check them all over for mistakes, and even after that there was not a section that I had less then fifteen minutes to collect myself before the next one.

It was ridiculously regulated, with the moderator reading a prepared speech all the way through. We had to have our calculators on the floor underneath the table when we were not doing a math section, though I do not know how a calculator could assist anyone with English. It was randomized so some people would do a math section while someone else did a reading one. And there was a dummy section, randomly selected that did not count to your grade. So if I did really well in a writing section, and it was the best I did in the test, but it was selected as the random dummy section, then obviously it would affect my final grade.

The SAT books I had read prior to the test also apparently expected SAT takers to write their essay out in one burst directly onto the grading sheet. With no notes. The SAT do provide a sheet for notes, but no one apparently used it. I did, and the moderator checked to make certain that I knew that it would not be graded in the notes page. I wrote it on the notes, made changes, then copied it to the answer sheet. And I finished the 25 minute essay with a little over five minutes to spare.

My nose started running near the end, which made the last few sections even more uncomfortable, as I had no tissues. I ended up only omitting two questions in the entire SAT, in the math section. Throughout the test, I continued occasionally hearing a quite noisy humming sound. After the last section, I was waiting twenty minutes for the SAT to end, and I recognized the sound again. Before, when I had heard the disturbance, I had only glanced up and assumed that it was the ventilation grate or something of that sort over the clock. I determined to see what it was this time, and studied the grate from my chair, unable to see anything with the grate to make it sound like that. I looked a little lower, and realized that it was the analog clock below the grate that was emitting the offending sound. The second hand was caught on the minute hand. It strained, and was trying to keep going, yet was hooked. It finally broke free, and motored around the face of the clock at leaps of five seconds, until it reached the minute hand again after only about ten seconds. It hooked on it again, and strained at its bonding hand. I glanced over at the moderator, who apparently was not noticing the drama above his head. The second hand broke free again, and did not hook on the minute hand again for the remainder of the test, but it had probably done it ten times or so over the course of the test.

It was ridiculous to me that when this was so regulated, it was using such a seriously messed up clock. The moderator would use his cell phone so that he would get a general idea of when he needed to look at the clock, then he would stand up and stare at the clock until the second hand reached the top, then he would say "Pencils down." One of my teachers at EMCC informed me that if someone had noticed the clock and complained about it, then all of our scores would probably have been thrown out.

As it was, I ended up with an overall score of 1930. And because of my servicable writing and reading scores, (630 and 690 respectively), the EMCC officials allowed me to take ENG-101 with Mr. Goldfine. And if I had never had Mr. Goldfine, then I would not be writing this blog. So all in all, I do not regret taking the test at all. And I am thankful that no one complained about the clock.