“You’re going to need these. You know you will.” I’m told as I look at my friend as he offers me an energy drink and a blue Bic pen. I never liked tests, especially the stress of them, but this is on a completely different level. Everyone is talking to each other, but nobody is prepared. This room of 70 or so people has us closer than ants in an ant hill. The crowd leaks into the neighboring room through an open doorway. It’s my third year at this school yet I’ve never talked to the person next to me. He’s unaware that every time he rocks back and forth the cap of his pen hits my leg. Near my heart rate, the poking is a gross reminder of the stress that pushes my stomach to my chest.
“I didn’t bring a second pencil. If it breaks I WILL just fail.”
I hear another person that I don’t know say incredibly loud from a few feet away. There isn’t a possibility I’ll know who said it though, people are already talking louder than they did to hear each other better after the statement. Surely this person knows that there will be more pencils from the proctors after raising their hand for several minutes, but the statement catches my attention in its binary nature. How prepared can you really be? This is the same test my parents took thirty years ago, and it’s the same one the underclassmen will take next year. Sure the questions and answers change, but the infamous reputation of the test will ensure that all students see it the same.
“I wonder when they’ll open the doors. It’s getting really hot out here and-”
I hear the loud click of the door’s latch and look over to see a proctor and the room goes silent for the first time since the second person walked in here. Nobody wants to miss what the proctors were saying, none of us knew how this worked. We’re asked to come in and the crowd multiples in density. Everyone hurries to not be shoulder-to-shoulder in the crowd, but all of us are because of the rush. I put my phone and wallet in a paper bag with my name written in Sharpie, the third name on the bag. I take my government-issued ID out as I run my hand across the seven rows of tables and find my seat, I open the shrink wrap and can’t help but think. Withheld on these papers inside the thin sheet of plastic can’t possibly encapsulate how much I’ve truly learned over my last eleven years.