“I’m so cooked!” yelled Hugo Yeoh (12), his voice echoing dramatically down the hallway like a warning to anyone brave, or foolish, enough to open another SAT practice test. It was only a few days before 8 November, when Dalat students would sit for the SAT, and stress levels were high above the roof.
Meanwhile, having experienced the horrible effects of the sinister SAT myself last December, I sat nearby watching my fellow senior classmates scramble through the SAT question bank, muttering formulas, and their eyes glued to laptop screens as prediction scores dropped, completely unaware that they looked like stressed-out pigs running straight into a metaphorical academic slaughter farm. The energy this past week? Chaotic. Confusing. And as Martin Scorsese would say—absolute cinema.
The Scholastic Aptitude Test, better known as the SAT, is designed to break the spirits of college-bound high school students with its combination of tricky reading passages, nit-picky grammar questions, and math problems that seem weirdly opposed to common sense. In short: if you ever wanted to inflict pain upon your mind, this is it, the SAT is a one way ticket to this 3-hour long mental misery.
During this chaotic season, not everyone was caught up in the frenzy. One junior, Henry Brooks (11), was in a zen state of mind nonchalantly watching the world burn.
“The SAT is like that bandage you know is going to be painful to rip off,” he said, “but you have to do it regardless.” A strangely poetic way to describe standardized testing, but honestly, he’s not wrong.
Whether you’re Hugo, dramatically breaking down in a hallway, or Henry, achieving inner peace in the midst of academic chaos, one thing is certain: the SAT season is here, and none of us are truly ready. But here’s the thing, if we’re all cooked, at least we’re cooked together.
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