The Rules According To Patrick

I studied for the SATs. I studied for them the entire ride to the testing center. Not such an easy thing to do when you’re the one driving, but I figured the slightest advantage would help.

I was 17, a smart kid from a rural town and I thought the only thing standing between me and the school of my choice was a silly test I could beat by skimming a 300 page book ten minutes before the moderator said, “You may begin.”

I’m not sure where this confidence came from. Maybe I’m the product of overly supportive parents. One time when I was a few years younger I was a very average wrestler. You could tell I wasn’t legit by the fact I used to walk out onto the mat with my arms crossed and my boxers sticking out the bottom of my stupidly tight singlet. Fortunately, there weren’t a lot of wrestlers my age as skinny as I was so I got to beat up on a lot of kids much younger than me. It felt great to throw a 12 year old to the ground.

There was one kid who was my age and significantly better than me. Every tournament the two of us would destroy the children and meet in the finals. Every tournament he would throttle me and accept his medal while I was still laying on the mat.

One day before a tournament, my father decided to be overly supportive. The embarrassment of cheering for me when an 11-year-old’s father next to him was screaming, “That kid with a beard is trying to kill my boy!” only to have every father gang up on him when I was planted into the mat had gotten to him. He wanted a victory. He wanted it so bad he did what most fathers do – blatantly lie to their children in the hopes of boosting their confidence.

He instructed me to look my frequent conqueror right in the eyes before the referee started the match and say, “Bet you’re thinking about getting first place, huh? I don’t think things are going to work out for you this time. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

Bad ass, huh? There never was a surprise, but the illusion and possibility that something might be different was supposed to be enough to give me an edge. Unfortunately, I didn’t deliver the line correctly and I got pinned right after saying, “Bet you’re thinking about getting first place. Hope things work out for you.”

The false confidence I had flat on my back was the same I felt as I parked the car at the SAT test center. I thought “would a 1400 make me look too much like a nerd? Maybe something in the high 1300’s would be better. Looks more indie.”

My first sign that I was overestimating the ease of the test came when instructions were given. Pencils, scrap paper, questions, bathroom breaks and objects allowed in the room were all strictly outlined. I knew I might be in trouble when I got lost at step 12 of how to report a broken pencil.

As soon as the test started, I began a slow decent into disgusting self-doubt. I’ll never forget the first question:

What is the average (arithmetic mean) of all the integers from -39 to 40, inclusive?

Math was not my expertise. The question would have made more sense to me if it were written as “What is the bramble (sunder kong) of all the windasels from -39 to 40, standango?

Not only did I have ZERO idea what they were asking for, but I knew the question was built to make fun of people…like me…who weren’t hip to the mathematical lingo. It would be like asking a nerd:

What’s the percent you should ask a girl to pay for dinner on the first date in order to have the greatest chance for a second date?

While they’re slamming through their calculators trying to find a percentage of X, you’re calmly circling D – the guy should pay for dinner on the first date.

Unfortunately, after staring at the question for roughly twelve minutes I realized I needed to add up the range of numbers they gave and find the average. After another twelve minutes I was adding -28 to -374 and decided perhaps this isn’t how the strategy book would suggest I answer this question. I circled B and moved on to the next question thinking it would be something simple like:

What is the chance you got the previous question right?

When the moderator circled a large 5 on the board to signify I had five minute to answer…all but one of the questions, I started trying to convince myself that a 1200 score was MUCH more indie and planned to make fun of people who got anything higher.

First break – I thought about making a run for it. Yes, there would be some shame in running away and yes, I would have to practice telling my parents “I’ve always wanted to work as an unskilled laborer,” but the alternative would entail an elaborate lie about how I was kidnapped and forced to answer every question wrong in order to be set free.

I elected to return to the test in hopes of acing the English portion of the test. English was my forte. Little did I know that none of the questions would entail the English I’d been using for the past 17 years.

…
My pencil was firmly planted on my desk when the instructor told us to put our pencils down. I’d finished the test in record time due to a new system I called “fuck it!”

The car trip home was the worst because my mind was still in over-analyzing mode. It felt like the STOP signs had question marks on the end of them, and the 24 hour gas station had a sign saying, “Open the average number of continuous integers from the standard deviation of prime numbers in the following range…”

It’s taken me a while to get over that sinking feeling that the only question you know the answer to is:  Who is the stupidest person in the room right now? No matter how many times I say, “I just don’t take standardized tests well,” I feel like adding “because I’m stupid.” The good news is that every day I wake up, that daunting combined verbal and math score fades further and further into the distance. Within a decade, I’ll be unable to differentiate between my real score and the score I like to tell people.

And that’s the beauty of standardized testing. It’s weighted so heavily in one moment in time and never again. After college, it’s hard to imagine your worth and intelligence is measured by your ability to find the section of a passage which states the author’s feelings towards the crab population in the Bay of Bengal. Your worth and intelligence is more aptly based on your ability to pay your bills, figure out the next book to read and find a way to keep the rest of the world from crushing you.

That and your paycheck – which, for me, is scarily similar to my SAT score now that I think about it.