An AP English language and composition student writes a note of commiseration to his fellow test-takers.
My fellow AP English students:
Many of you have just been introduced to the world of higher education with the completion of the AP exam. I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that this exam is indeed an accurate reflection of your college fate in that it was unreasonably expensive and completely useless for about half the students who take it, with its 55% pass rate. I don’t know if you remember that $100 price tag, as it was due near the beginning of the year before we knew anything about what the test actually entailed, but those who paid it will be happy to know that, even with its priciness, you can save hundreds of dollars in tuition if you pass. It’s similar to if someone were selling a Hershey chocolate bar on the corner of the road for $400, but someone is standing right next to them; that second person is marketing a great deal! For only $100, he would flip a coin, and you would get the candy if you guess correctly. I’m sure you got what I wanted you to get from that…$300 off! What a steal!
If you paid the money, you entered the AP exam room on May 9th with the rest of us. After you were given the opportunity to explore the room (the seats were random and in the last place you looked), you set down your pencil or you borrowed one from the person next to you who had brought enough to supply Central for a week. You sat through a tedious introduction, and then you gave them all the information you know they were given by your school already. They allow you time to fill in all the information. This time is partly, as I said, to fill in the information, but it also serves as some awkward silence to build the tension. With this tension built, they announced the start of the multiple-choice section. Now, the multiple-choice section is unique in that it mostly serves as a time-filler while you stress about the upcoming essay section. Don’t get me wrong: it’s also sufficiently infuriating so as not to break the mold.
I’m sure most of you, like me, struggled to muster up the slightest bit of interest for the riveting technology of vertical farming.
You opened the packet and began to read a random but simple passage. It seemed easy to understand, but don’t be deceived. The difficulty comes not with the passage but with the questions that follow. The questions also seem simple until you read the answers. C and D were so obviously wrong that you almost felt insulted that this was supposed to be challenging. A and B, however, could both be considered right at face value, but you realized that A fit slightly more after thinking on it for a bit. You were right of course: A fits slightly better, but unfortunately… B was the correct answer. The multiple-choice section is defined by this aggressive and meaningless ambiguity. If you were unfortunate enough to have finished early, you flipped through the passages, unsure what to look at or fix but you put on a show as if Mr. Sheehy was there in spirit… watching… judging.
Oh god, it was now the moment you’d been dreading for the last month… er… since the start of the exam I mean. We all had confidence in ourselves. Anyway, the essay section has been dreaded in this same way by hundreds of thousands of students since its creation decades ago. You filled out more information before they alerted you of the reading section. The reading section mostly told me that they knew I couldn’t see the clock, but they refused to do anything about it except let me know when 15 minutes of the 2-hour period had passed… useful. I don’t remember much of the essay section because most of my writing was just me mindlessly BSing through the topics. I’m sure most of you, like me, struggled to muster up the slightest bit of interest for the riveting technology of vertical farming.
The argumentative one, though, toed the line of easy and infuriating. It was easy because the prompt was literally just to argue a position on whether or not intimidation was a good tactic. It was literally like, “if you scare someone into submission, it might even cause resentment.” That one was so easy to argue that it seemed stupid. It was also kind of sad that this quote came from a US representative. After this, the AP exam was finished. We all went home and, although it was hard, we didn’t talk about the prompts before we were supposed to. If we immediately started a conversation on the plausibility of vertical farming the next morning, it was completely unrelated. Now, we just need to wait until the middle of the summer for a random convention of teachers to meet in Florida and grade our essays. Let’s all pray Florida doesn’t sink into the ocean by then.
Photo: “Examination” by Thomas Galvez on Flickr
The Pine Needle 