I Heard it Downtown

I closed my eyes this morning for a second, and had a rather unpleasant flashback. I was back in my freshman Geometry class, struggling through axioms, proofs, and dejectedly looking at my latest test, awash in angry red ink. 68%. I remember looking up at Mr.Bright and asked the question that would be burned into the minds of future liberal arts students everywhere. “Seriously, Mr.Bright, when am I ever going to USE this?”

And here was my answer…on the Praxis test. Why high school math problems were on my elementary school content Praxis exam, I’ll never know…but they were there, sending me into a mental tailspin, as I searched the deep recesses of my brain for facts that probably were never there to begin with.

Everybody told me not to worry much about the test. “Its just Elementary School content stuff…you’re about to graduate college right? No sweat”…so I didn’t sweat. But when those first two math problems were questions that I vaguely remembered from my SAT, I my fear that I had outkicked my coverage with this whole Teach For America business came back out to the forefront.

I had hoped I was done with this whole standardized test stuff by now. I’ve been celebrating after every one I’ve taken now, sure that it would be the last time I would be told to “put my no.2 pencils down”, but alas, they keep throwing more at me. I thought the SAT was the last one, then I had to take that again, then the LSAT, and now the Praxis…and I’m hearing rumors that there will be more Praxis tests in my future. I’m lucky that I tend to do fairly well on these tests, but I wouldn’t say that I don’t “sweat” them…mostly because I think I peaked academically in 8th grade.

I wonder what a “no sweat” test would look like. Maybe if we got rid of all the “arcane math problems” and “graph reading” questions, and changed the categories to something like…

Geeky Political Trivia
Bruce Springsteen
The NBA
Great Moments in Ohio Sports Curse History
Terrible Puns

and the Essay Question: Sarah Palin is giving a press conference today. In a facebook note between 600-1,000 words, make as many jokes as you possibly can.

Would I pass that no problem? You Betcha.

Luckily for me, the first two math questions were the exception, and the rest of my 120 question exam focused on things I actually know. I’m pretty confident that my results will show that I know enough about fractions and basic American history to be trusted in front of 3rd graders.

More importantly though, I know how to answer when some smaralec asks “when are we going to use this?”