Uh-Oh, I Just Became A Party of One

 

I'm re-posting this from Kitchen Table Math in it's entirety. I just have two things to add:

1) "Cathy" (whom I've always known as "Catherine") is the one who ignited this crazy SAT obsession.  I can still recall the precise moment, sitting in a local restaurant, when I asked her about "test prep" for my son.

"Start with the Question of the Day," she said, neither of us having any idea of the monster that was about to be unleashed.

2) I feel pretty sure that she'll be the one doing the happy dance on score day -- and my inexorable enthusiasm for the SAT could very well appear more like "slightly stunned."

That said, I did have fun, no question about that, and if "fun" is any part of the criteria here, then I absolutely score high.

So here goes, Catherine's post about SAT Day, from Kitchen Table Math:

first-serve Debbie and death-march Cathy

As an aside: Cathy is my real name, the name I grew up with. I changed to Catherine when I was hired to teach at UCLA at age 27, I think it was. I looked the same age as my students, who called professors by their first names, so I switched to Catherine and have been Catherine ever since, except in Illinois, where everyone I know calls me Cathy. Ed calls Illinois "Cathy-land."

Anyways, I am lollling reading Debbie's SAT post this morning:

"Not sure if those were the words that inspired my unplanned, last second, impulsive shift in strategy -- but I took SAT #5 in 2011, all in first-serves. I was aggressive. There was not one iota of perseveration in my game that day....I had a blast and enjoyed every second of the experience. I distinctly remember thinking as I colored in those first bubbles with that deliciously soft and perfectly sharpened #2 pencil, "This feels soooooo good."

Of course, I already knew this. Saturday afternoon, 2pm or so, as I was sitting at my kitchen table (where else?) in a stupor, Debbie called and said, re: the SAT we had both taken that morning, "Did you love it!?! I loved it!!!!"

Debbie is the single most enthusiastic person I have ever met in my entire life, and I say that as a person of extremely high enthusiasm myself. I have so much enthusiasm - my real name is Cathy !! - that until I met Debbie, I was the most enthusiastic person I had ever met in my entire life. Now I'm number 2.

Which brings me to: did I enjoy it?

Taking the SAT: did I enjoy it?

Answer: No.

I did not.

Not one bit, except for the guaranteed peace and quiet during the timed test sections: as a person working at home, I can see the value in having your own personal time-and-space proctor enforcing silence and an appropriate seating arrangement in 25-minute increments. I've always thought I needed an assistant, but I was wrong. I need a proctor.

The SAT, for me, was not a tennis match. Not that I've ever played a tennis match. Where tennis is concerned, I am apparently a permanent taker of tennis lessons, not a player of tennis games.

The SAT, for me, was more like a death march, which seems to be what it is for a lot of actual high school juniors and seniors.

A death march to, I dunno, SUNY New Palz, maybe...

1 Well, everyone I know except for people I know through ktm.

2 Debbie, btw, is an extremely good tennis player. Not that she will tell you this.

3 The only thing I know about SUNY New Palz is that's the college Anthony Weiner attended; I hope I'm not hurting people's feelings, and I'm very sorry if I have.

 

Illustrations by Jennifer Orkin Lewis