“Bum bum bum ba bum bum bum,” the audio blared throughout the classroom. “Yeah that’s right,” I uttered while checking a box on my computer. “I can hear.”
The competition was on. My state test was about to begin.
“You won’t beat me,” said the glasses-wielding AP student next to me. “I’m going to score the highest in the state.”
“Little does he know,” I thought. “I learned how to butterfly-click for this.”
This year was like any other. In-between removing the members tab from Schoology courses, screaming at students for phone-use and handing out detentions for not showing up to school with a student ID, Pali begged its students for a favor: to lock-in during state testing; to take their time as hours of sixth-grade math and seventh-grade science are shoved down their throats.
I heard Dr. Magee’s voice ring out through the PA system. “State testing is really important for all of us,” she said. “It decides how highly the school ranks and thus our administration’s performance, and it maybe could even theoretically impact students’ ability to get into some colleges possibly when viewing things from the hypothetical.”
Normally, students ignore the administration’s pleas, but this time they had been received so well by students that a state-testing competition was organized.
“I will be first,” I thought. “This is my Monaco. My Daytona. My Indianapolis 500. My 25 minutes of Le Mans. Right now I am waiting for approval, but soon the only thing I will wait for is my proctor to skip over the error message that says I am going too quickly, and the little cute sloth I will be forced to betray.”
The test began. Questions whizzed past my eyes faster than Pali whizzing down in the state high school rankings. The only thing slowing me down was my Lenovo and the chaos unfolding around me: kids waiting in a 10-hour line for the tech office, computers randomly updating, students begging for chargers, “Bum bum bum ba bum bum bum.”
The test didn’t tell me when it would end or when I would reach the final level (question). “It’s perfect for speedrunning,” I thought to myself. “Devoid of any distractions, not even a progress bar.”
I peeked at the screen on the desk next to mine, exchanging valuable time for information on where my opponents stood in the leaderboards. The AP student was only on question five. I was on question twenty. “What an amateur,” I thought. “Do they think they have to actually read the questions for their time to count?”
As soon as I hit question 30, I was ready for the second part of my speedrun: The section after the test where I had to navigate to Cool Math Games before I could stop my clock.
By question 37 I grew worried that the test would never finish.
But then, something happened. My scores revealed themselves. I was shocked at how high they were: “Wow, almost 100? Even though I only picked answer choice A?”
I was distracted. I still had a job to do. I navigated my cursor to the button that would free me from the hell of state testing. Then, my screen went black.
“Noooooo!” I wailed. “Of course! My computer randomly turns off for no reason when it gets down to 5%.”
My mistake cost me. When I opened Cool Math Games, when I reached Vienna, 30 minutes of my two-hour testing period had elapsed. Out of all three thousand students at Pali, I didn’t even crack the 10th percentile.
That was when I made a promise to myself: “Next year, next year I will be the best state test taker of all time. Next year I will finish first.”
