Painful, Slimy, Atrocious Torture

A n idyllic English classroom sits on the third floor of a ven- erable high school. Its tall windows are open and au- tumn sunlight spills over the semicircle of gray Formica tables where a handful of earnest eleventh-grade schol- ars discuss the latest turn of events in Arthur Miller's "The Crucible." Lopsided piles of candy-colored binders and textbooks teeter at the elbows of each student in the classroom, and the big round clock on the wall above the teacher's desk displays a time comfortingly close to the much-anticipated lunch break.

But a cloud hangs over the classroom, a thick, dingy, oppressive cloud that weaves in and out of each student's very being, threatening to spout thunder and lightning and fist-sized lumps of hail at any moment. It blurs the fine print in the textbooks and sops the neatly printed bul- letins tacked to the wall. And as hard as the students may try to banish its very exis- tence from all contemplation, as they file out of the room towards the common area it hits them directly in the face in the form of the following notice posted alongside the door:

"PSAT Testing - October 16."

Yes - the PSATs are upon us. The official definition of this acronym is "Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test". However, my personal re- search has uncovered several other possible translations:

Painful, Slimy and Atro- cious Torture

Psychiatric Services Are Tantamount (if you want to avoid a nervous breakdown)

Prefer to Sleep Atop Tacks (heck, I would!)

Yeah, I'm not exactly looking forward to it.

I've been prepping like nobody's business; utilizing everything from the thou- sand-page-long official study guide to a video game bor- rowed from my math teacher to a sketchy prep course called "Up Your Score". Social interaction, long-term class projects, and even this column have all had to take a backseat this week. In fact, even as I type this, I'm taking breaks to work on a mock-up writing/reading test, because (somewhat ironically) writ- ing has been my weakest category on all the practice tests I've taken and thus the area I've devoted the most attention to.

I'm scared. I wrote the PSAT date on my calendar in the curliest pink cursive I could manage, and I still shudder every time I look at the little box with a "16" in the corner. "The Test" has fully absorbed my mind, to the point where the latest story I've started writing is a horror tale about werewolves and standardized testing. My bedroom is littered with vocabulary lists, probability spreadsheets, scratch paper covered in math equations, and pictures of corgis. (Okay, the corgis were there before I started studying, but nobody needs to know that.)

And to make matters worse, I have a little brother who just loves to take ad- vantage of the long periods of time during which I am forced to sit still and con- centrate completely on vex- ing math equations. These scenarios usually end with him dashing briskly down the hallway laughing and me wringing wads of shaving cream out of my hair while yelling something about how he's going to catch it if I don't qualify for a National Merit Scholarship.

The sooner this thing's over, the happier I'll be.