I said I'd write a post about this... and then I actually followed up on it!!!  Aren't you proud of me?

So. SAT this morning. We got up at an ungodly hour to meet the Duncans to carpool to the test, and I actually felt pretty rested when I woke up! Those of you who know me know that that's almost a miracle! Prayer works.

We met Mrs. Duncan and Aaron (Duncan, a SALTeam member on the Branson AIM team, who was also taking the test) at the commuter parking lot - they were a little late, but that turned out to be good, because we got to the test center about 20 minutes before registration started. We occupied the drive up talking about a wide variety of different topics, mostly pertaining to homeschooling, and particularly the relative merits of various high school math courses. (Courses discussed: Saxon, Math-U-See, and Jacobs.)

After sitting in the parking lot for about 10 minutes, the three of us - Aaron, Jessica, and I - headed toward the building. It was the same place I had taken the SAT through the Duke TIP several years ago. They had us separated into two rooms by last name, so Roberts and Duncan had to part ways. Too bad; Aaron had the cell phone. Normally you're not allowed to use a cell phone in the test center, but this would soon become an important point. Keep reading.

We waited in the hall for about five minutes, then the test administrator (a young lady who I'm guessing was either a college student at MSU or just out of college) opened the doors and let us in. She checked IDs at the door, and, noticing that Jessica and I were sisters, asked the proctor (a young man who I'm sure was a MSU student) to seat us apart from each other. This he did. We had kind of been hoping we'd be able to sit together, but I understand why they had to separate us.

We were seated in a big classroom, with rows of tables with chairs attached, stepping down like an ampitheater toward the front of the classroom. We were seated in every other row of seats, and there was an empty seat on either side of each student. I guess that's to make it harder to cheat. I was seated in the very front row, right in front of the test administrator's podium.

We started by giving our name, address, SSN, and all those other vital stats... standard standardized (nice choice of words there, huh?) test stuff. Then came the first section: the dreaded SAT essay.

In anticipation of this wonderful section, we had borrowed a set of DVDs with tips on how to do well on the SAT essay. They were done by this guy whose name I can't spell but I can pronounce: Andrew POO-duh-wah (Mr. P). They were very helpful, and I don't think I would have done very well without them. There are a few points on which I disagreed with him, but for the most part it was good stuff. Jess and I watched those earlier this week, so we figured we were pretty well prepared for the essay.

I have signed my name and promised several times not to share ANY information with you regarding the essay section, unless I want the full wrath of the College Board to descend upon me. Well, I don't really want that, so I won't tell you what the question was. I will say that it was more difficult than some of the prompts that Mr. P gave us, but I thought I did an okay job with it. I took the minority position, which will hopefully earn me some points with the judges I used one example from literature (points with English teacher judges) and a couple from current events (points with journalist judges). According to Mr. P, English teachers and journalists make up the majority of the people who score these tests. My main concern is that the essay isn't quite long enough - I only managed to fill 1 1/3 of the two pages they gave me, and I was hoping to fill a good bit more than that. Oh well. I did my best. That's what counts, right?

It was nice to get the essay section out of the way first - for more reasons than one. First, you tend to be more brain-dead after answering four hours' worth of multiple choice questions. Second - and I found this out the hard way on the ACT essay - your pencils tend to be quite a bit duller by that time, too.

And then came nine - count 'em, nine - 20-25 minute sections, testing mathematical, writing, and verbal abilities. In case you're wondering - I'm still not entirely sure which ones were writing and which ones were verbal. The questions on them weren't all that different. The sections were pretty easy for me. For one thing, I've taken a lot of standardized tests, and for another thing, I seem to have a knack for standardized tests in general. Wierd thing to have a knack for, I know. It's pretty nice to have around, though.  I finished all the sections before time was called, and on most of them, I had time to go back and review all of my answers. So that was nice. It did get boring, though, after I had done the section and reviewed my answers, and still had several minutes to go. Jessica was usually done early, too, so we passed the time by making faces and shrugging at each other across the room.

There was one incident that disrupted an otherwise ordinary testing day. About 10:30, just as I had finished checking my work on a verbal section, the fire alarm started going off! We all tried to ignore it and concentrate on the test, while the administrator rushed out of the room. She returned about 30 seconds later, paused the timer, and told us that we needed to evacuate the building. We all filed out calmly, out onto the porch of the building. We were there for about five minutes, wondering what was going on, when we heard the wail of a fire siren, heading toward the university campus! WOW! Sure enough, the fire engine pulled up right next to the building, and we were all ordered to head toward the parking lot. As we walked toward the parking lot, Jessica and I spotted Aaron on his cell phone, calling his mom to tell her what was going on. Man, it would have been nice to have a cell phone to call our mom! (But Miss Brilliant here left it in the car. )

About fifteen minutes later, the fire truck left, and we all went back into the building. Evidently there had been some electrical malfunction that had triggered the alarm, but there was no fire in the building. Whew! We continued with the test as if nothing had happened. We're pretty sure the test will count, but there's a chance that because of the craziness, College Board will decide that our scores won't count. I sure hope that doesn't happen! I'm ready to be DONE with the SAT!

After our test finished, we waited for a few minutes until Aaron's got done, than headed out to the parking lot, where Mrs. Duncan was waiting. We drove through Wendy's, again enjoyed a varied conversation, this time ranging from essay contests to the fat content of French fries to Josiah's vocabulary, and got back to the commuter lot at around 2:30. And that was that. We get our scores on May 24. I'll let you know how we did!