sat debacle

Let’s start with Saturday, which is the day I took my SAT. Twenty-five minutes into the test, I decided that I was going to retake it next year. Because at the end of those twenty-five minutes, time was called for Section 1, and I had still not finished my essay. I hadn’t written the concluding paragraph; hell, I hadn’t even completed the second-last paragraph. That’s obviously going to hurt my score really badly, and continuing the test was pretty much pointless. I did so anyway because I would have had to answer a lot of questions if I just walked out and returned home (assuming that one could have done that in the middle of the test). I decided to get on with the rest of the sections anyway, and whenever I had time, surreptitiously turn back to the essay to write down the stuff that I had in mind. I had pretty much formulated the concluding paragraph in my head, one that would make my essay look as though I had finished it comfortably in time. The only problem was that the proctor had a pretty sharp eye, or so I imagined, and his was a subtly intimidating personality; the kind that would reduce you to speculating about what kind of punishment you would get if you were caught in your subterfuge. Moreover, I wasn’t keen on being kicked out of the building. That would have necessitated more explanations than I could have given. Nevertheless, I managed to finish the second-last paragraph. I wrote half the first sentence of the concluding paragraph after I’d finished one section, and had begun to work on the rest at the end of the next section. I’d forgotten what I’d written earlier, and since I had to cover half the page so as not to give away the fact that I was writing the essay when I was not supposed to, there was no way to ascertain. The result was this: “To conclude I would like to conclude.” Strangely enough, it actually makes sense. I really should have liked to conclude my essay. I wonder if the person or persons reading it are going to construe it this way, despite the lack of a period at the end of the sentence. In any case, hoping for a good score would be hoping for way too much.

Note: This unpublished post was posted in 2015. November 9 is just a guess.