SAT Aftermath

Well, it's done, and I hope this will be the last time I have to do it. It was surprisingly less stressful and overwhelming than I had expected, although it was certainly long (5 hours of testing, including three breaks that totalled 11 minutes altogether). It was actually a close-run thing, arriving on time, though through no fault of our own. My admission ticket gave Sunset High School as the testing center. We duly trotted over there on the fateful morning, only to find the place nearly deserted, except for band practice and "Saturday School." No signs advertising the SAT. No queues of students. Not even very many lights on. We and four or five other befuddled kids walked round the place looking for something hopeful, until a person evidently connected to the Saturday School informed us that the testing center had been moved to Westview High School.

Well, think we, many thanks to the College Board for informing us of the change. And so we hussle off to Westview, scooting in near the end of the line, and there turned out to be no trouble getting in.

500 students were taking the test at the high school that day, but fortunately we were siphoned off into classrooms, giving me only 29 fellow testers. With my tan slacks and wine-red turtleneck, I didn't consider myself dressed to the nines, but it rather looked like that by comparison. One young man was wearing what were obviously plaid pajama pants, several girls had slippers on, and another was wearing something like athletic tights or long underwear, ripped at the knee. Not a particularly unexpected wardrobe, but still rather sad.

After being informed of all the various SAT misdemeanors and felonies that could result in immediate expulsion and cancellation of scores, we slogged on through the test. The essay prompt was fairly easy, fortunately, as I was able to include an example from The Remains of the Day, which I recently finished reading, and bring up the RUF from the Sierra Leone Civil War, as I had just watched half of Blood Diamond the evening before. I was also able to slip in the word "evitable," which I had just learned about in Thoreau's Walden a day or so earlier. So lots of things worked out well there. :-) It's possible I focused more on the negative side of my point than on the positive side, but that is, of course, impossible to edit.

The verbal and writing sections were generally quite easy, and though some math problems certainly posed a difficulty, I was able to do all of them, which is more than I can say for some of my practice tests. All in all, I felt quite positive about the whole thing. So praise God for that, and many thanks for all your prayers!

Now I just have to wait until the 20th to see if my impressions are confirmed. :-)