Shakespeare vs the SAT

Two years ago, I took both the SATs and ACTs, as well as took a prep course for the SAT. During the course, my friend and I goofed off the whole time, went to Starbucks during break, and laughed and laughed and laughed. We tried to make the teacher play a game once, "Stools", a game that our american lit/creative writing/AP lang teacher had our class play every Wednesday -- the guy whose had most influence on my writing to date.

The course didn't stress me out, and neither did the physical tests. I didn't take it seriously enough, though, as well as I handled most of my education up to now. I was a floater. I considered going to a concert the night before the ACT. I did not see the tests as something that could hinder myself, of course, only I can do that. I received my scores and immediately knew I could have done better. It doesn't effect my life whatsoever now. It never really did. It's just nice to know it's there.

And then it was senior year when I took AP Language & Composition. In the class we wrote all types of essays, my teacher chose themes for the different ones, we had "I believe", the fear paper, our soapbox speech (what we really had to say in that moment in our lives). Even more, we practiced rhetorical analysis weekly. It was hard to position myself into this course, especially being a lazy senior, added with being the floater that I was. And when I took the AP exam, I took it seriously, but I was safe. And this will get me to my point.

I was talking to friends in the course (although you're not supposed to - don't sue me College Board!) about the test, and one of them told me that he decided to write a satire for one of the prompts. It was brilliant, and I didn't even think of going there. I wanted to be safe. I could guarantee myself a passing grade, but not a perfect 9, but also not a 1. I was floating, still.

With this in mind, as I read the Atlantic article "Would Shakespeare Get Into Swarthmore?", I immediately thought of what I felt when I took these tests junior and senior years of high school, but couldn't articulate about them. The essay portions were boring; you had to write an ordinary, lackluster essay to get an above-average score. In addition, Katzman, Lutz, and Olson screamed and begged, "do not write boring things!" with their really clever use of rhetoric. The article contained great satire (I mean, giving the Unabomber a 6 isn't ironic, right?) , and I could not stop nodding my head in agreement. I rarely took risks in high school that I should have, and try to do so as often as possible now.

So I am here to spread this: do not write boring things. It is the same with days in a life, do not do boring things. If not, are you really living?