Test

I fear tests. The very idea of a test gets my blood churning. The anticipation, the horror of having to take one just does it for me. The concept of having to sit through three or four hours of mind-breaking information kills me. The funny thing is that for as long as I can remember I have always been this way. Even when I was a little kid and I had to take a coloring test I got nervous. When the teacher said get your crayons ready, I would wet in the pants. Then in middle school it got worse because I started throwing up before an exam because I could not handle the anxiety. By high school it was a regular routine for me to get nervous, anxious and of course race to the bathroom before I had to take a quiz. Lo and behold by the time college came around I had it more under control than in high school, but I always felt worried before tests. What if I scored terribly? What would my parents say if I failed? How could I face my peers? And what If I couldn’t find a job because my scores weren’t good enough? That of course never happened, but you get the idea. Now that I’ve finished college I have gotten over the fear of taking academic tests, but the problem is that now I have to take subject matter tests to prove the competency of my ability to teach and so forth. I don’t get it. Why do I have to prove that I understand literature when I already have a bachelor’s degree? Isn’t that piece of paper enough to say that I know English? I guess not. I guess the Teachers of America must understand that I am competent enough to teach the subject by making me take a test that proves I know English. Yeah, Im excited that I passed the first two sections. But what about the third and fourth part? I haven’t passed those yet and to be quite honest with you I am terrified. I am terrified of having to go into that classroom on July 19, 2008 and take the very test that will determine my fate as an educator. What if I don’t pass? What if everything I have dreamed and hoped for disappears? What If I don’t make it into the second semester of the program? Ah. The very idea of not passing frightens me. And now to top it all off, I have to take the GRE and GRE Subject Test for English.

The GRE. Uggh. I hate the word. I took a class to prepare for it and I feel like I came out of it worse than when I entered. I spent months scrambling over words, learning math formulas and practicing hints that would make me improve my score. Now what do I have to show for it? A 470 in Verbal and 510 in Math. Gosh, you would think that by now I would be doing better in Verbal than in Math. But of course not. It’s the other way around. I guess all those hours of studying Math made me improve, but unfortunately grad schools aren’t looking at my Math score, what they care to see if I understand verbal concepts. Apparently I don’t. Apparently top tier schools will be scrutinizing my scores. To think that a test can create all these feelings of self-doubt and anxiety. To think that one simple test can do all of this and more? Unfortunately yes. But I have something better than all of that to my advantage. The power of the pen to write about how nonsensical I think it is.