The Test

The Test

Five hundred twenty-nine thousand six hundred minutes. How do you measure, measure a year? In daylights, in star sets or places you see? How about…study hours? In May of two thousand and four, one hundred students were gathered to receive their study assignments for the Advanced Placement European history and World History class. Some students began to study immediately. Not only was there an essay due on the first day of the next school year, but there would also be a test. However, this is not the test that this story is about. Like any other A.P. hopeful, I went home that day and opened the book in preparation to read what was contained in those amazing pages. In between reading about Paleolithic Societies and the Agricultural revolution I found my face buried in the book with the pages being stained with drool. Finally, towards the end of the summer, I panicked. If I couldn’t handle this, how was I supposed to handle the AP test at the end of the year? I had over ten chapters to read and an essay to write and it was only two weeks before school started. So, I delved into my study packet and only read what we would be tested on. To this day I don’t know more than three of the roman emperors, and two of them are called Caesar. Anyway, when I came back from Texas I realized that I had no clue what my essay even was about. Well, I found out and wrote it in two days. I took the test and I was just one below setting the curve. Then the real work began.
Out of the one hundred students who had signed up, only twenty of us stuck with it throughout the year. The essay that was due on the first day was only the first of over thirty five essays. Every Monday I would go into class and take a test on the chapters that we were supposed to have read over the past week. Every three weeks we would have a seventy question test and every single vacation we had large projects. During the entire year my teacher kept drilling into us how hard the test would be. The week before the test, after a years worth of hard work…well, we all wanted to pretty much die. Students were comparing study hours and I stayed out of that. I didn’t want to talk about the difficult time I had spent studying. Nobody would want to hear about how I worked and I slaved over the book. That was the hardest half hour I had ever spent studying. After that I just couldn’t take it anymore. Then and there I decided that the hard work and notes that I had taken all year had to be enough.
The day of the test we were waiting in the career center for the last of us to arrive so that we could go take the test. Well, she had forgotten so we waited all of lunch for her to show up.
Fast forward to the testing room…The packet was on my desk and my pencil was ready. There was no moisture in my mouth. The proctor signaled for us to begin and I opened the test. I laughed when I saw the fist question. I said my prayers at least fifteen times during the multiple choice section; it was a very spiritual experience. I began to think that I should have studied for more than an hour the night before. Just kidding, I was actually very prepared and I got through the multiple choice section without too much difficulty. By law we weren’t supposed to talk about the test for 48 hours after…my class didn’t last forty eight seconds.
Part two was the essays. Although you may not find it funny, I certainly did being there. When the booklets were opened every single student except for me muttered an expletive after seeing the essay topics. It didn’t worry me. In fact, I actually chose one of the hardest ones to write on. Nobody in their right mind would choose that one but I believe that essay was the reason I passed. As I said before, I knew nothing about Rome and what I did know was during the incorrect time period. So, for my final essay I chose to write about the change over time in India between 300 and 600 AD. Sadly, I did not know any changes, only continuities. Since I was already two paragraphs into the paper I decided to talk about what was going on in China at the time while saying that it happened in India. The joke was on me however when I discovered that all of the information that I had written was actually correct.
Fast forward to June…the AP scores came. I was terrified. I wrote an essay on India for crying out loud. I didn’t want to open it, but I didn’t want anybody else to open them to either. Anyway, long story short, I opened the scores and held my breath. Mom thought that I had gotten horrible scores because I sounded like I was crying. Well, I was almost crying, but not because the scores were bad. I was laughing like mom in a movie theater. I was almost screaming. I had gotten not a three like I had expected, but a five on the test. Just pause for a minute…the tests are such that if you fill one in and get it wrong, you are penalized 1.25 points.