I took the SATs this morning, and surprisingly enough, it really wasn't too painful. Well, except for the fact that you have to spend four agonizing hours in a small room with thirty strangers, of course.

    The test itself really wasn't too challenging: it was a lot of common sense, relatively basic vocabulary words and some math problems. Don't get me wrong- there were definitely a good amount of questions that left me absolutely stumped, but for the most part I felt pretty confident about my ability to answer the questions. I was expecting it to be harder, actually. As a high school student, you hear lots of accounts of SAT experiences, from all kinds of people. As time went by, I couldn't help but internalize that I have to do well because good SAT scores are the "key" to getting in to a good college. This notion, however,  slowly got erased from my mind over the years as I read about all the ridiculous cases in which colleges had to turn away some kids with perfect 2400s because there were simply too many of them and the schools wanted to maintain "some diversity". With so many kids getting perfect scores, how can you keep up? You may get a really good score, say in the 2200 range, but it still won't compare! Are you supposed to just quit while you're ahead, or what?   

    Knowing the crazy competition, I got kind of freaked out when I looked at my calendar last monday and suddenly the saw the dreaded acronym looming 5 only days ahead. It sprung up on me amidst AP preparations and the rest of the hubbub that starts to rise as the end of the year approaches.    Last night I contemplated actually studying. I whipped out the huge blue "Official SAT Study Guide" (which had accumulated dust already, of course) and started flipping through it. I gave up after several minutes though. I mean, you can't just look through the book and magically do better. I had guilt-tripped myself into ordering the book on Amazon.com in October, thinking it might serve as a replacement for one of those preparation courses. I'm sure there's no comparison, but we'll see, maybe I'll try looking through it again if I'm not happy with the scores I get. Who knows what these scores mean for my future? I guess only time and the college board will tell.