My 16 year old son, Brandon, who is a junior in high school, is taking his ACT’s today. He seemed to be pretty nervous about them last night. He actually came and slept with me and his little brother because he thought he was going to have trouble sleeping. (This meant I had a full bed, which included the puppy, so I didn’t get a great night’s sleep.) I’m really hoping he does OK, but he has some pretty high expectations for himself and I don’t want him to become discouraged and give up if he doesn’t do well.
It’s not that I don’t think he’ll do well, it’s just that these kids seem to me to have an unreasonable expectation of what they have to get on this test. He’s a smart kid, very capable if not a little bit of an underachiever. Things come easy for him and he knows it, so he doesn’t push himself as much as he could. When he does push himself, it’s an almost impossible goal. There is very little in-between for my son. When he told me he was shooting to get a 30 on the ACT’s, my first reaction was to laugh. I know, what a great mom! I instantly felt bad and tried to explain that I wasn’t laughing at him, but I had never personally known anyone to get that score and I had known several people that were considered “geniuses”. My boy didn’t care, that’s the score he was aiming for and that’s what he’s going to get.
My niece told me about a girl in her class who is considered to be very smart. She took the test three times to get a score that she considered acceptable, a 27. A co-worker told me that one of his daughters is not a very good test taker and she worked her butt off to get a 23. What really surprised me it that he said that now this is not considered a very good score. I couldn’t believe it! I knew a bunch of people who would have been jumping up & down for joy for a 23 when I was in school!
Have times really changed that much? My first reaction was that I don’t remember being that worked up or nervous over taking the ACT when I was in school a hundred thousand years ago. A score of 27 or higher was practically unheard of, except in those stories that start: “I have a friend, who has a friend, who knows this guy that got a 1000 on the ACT”. Of course, no one ever met the genius in person, it was just an urban myth. A score of 23 was way better than average. Is there really that much more pressure on our kids today?
But once I thought about it more, I realized that it really hasn’t changed that much. Yeah, sure, maybe the scoring required for better schools has gone up, but the amount of pressure and anxiety is still the same. There are still the certain personality types out there that will spend countless hours studying and losing sleep trying to get the “perfect” score. Some will succeed and others won’t. There will be the kids on the other side of the coin, who couldn’t really care what score they get, but will walk into the test, sit down, finish first, walk out and forget about it, and they will get a better score than anyone else in the room.
I tended to be one of these kids. I was a great test taker, and could fake it without really knowing the material I was being tested on. Is it fair? Hell, no, but could I help it? I’ve tried for many years to tell myself that I shouldn’t feel guilty about this. I didn’t do anything wrong, I just happen to have a special knack for taking tests. It’s hard, though, because it is a talent that really pisses off the people who struggle with taking tests. It sure as hell didn’t make me any friends. I took the ACT once, got a decent score, and stopped there. I didn’t lose any sleep over it one way or the other. I guess this is why my son’s nervousness surprises me. He also is a great test taker, and should be proud with whatever score he gets.
Once, many years ago, I mentioned to my mom that I did occasionally wonder what I could have gotten on my ACT if I had studied like everyone else, or retaken it. That’s when she told me her story. She was one of the kids who studied, worried and obsessed over tests. She took her SAT’s twice. On the first one she got a fairly decent score, but not what she wanted. So she studied twice as hard, retook the test, and did WORSE on the second one. Unfortunately, they didn’t take the best score, they only accepted the most recent score. She’s still upset by it all these years later, but it helped to teach the lesson that too much preparation can be as bad as not enough.
What’s the moral of my story? That I like to babble? I guess it’s that while I do not obsess about testing, I do obsess about my children and don’t want to see them anxious or disappointment. Please keep your fingers crossed for my son; I hope he gets what he wants so badly.
