Maybe I’m feeling nervous for something I already know I failed at, or maybe it’s the constant clicking on keyboards in this office that gives me anxiety. One man gets up retrieves his scores and walks out. Then another and another. I’m convinced everyone has passed but I’m still working, or trying to focus so hard that I can’t understand the simplest of questions... “In this passage, what is the author’s tone?” Unfortunately there wasn’t a box where I could type my answer, “I don’t really care what the tone of the passage is, I just really wish I wasn’t here right now”. At this point, no one else is in the room. It’s just me and the instructor who’s clearly waiting on me so he can eat lunch in peace. It was like my answer implied, being alone in that room is almost like not being in the room at all. I reread the passage 3 times. There’s 13 minutes on the clock still and every time I reread the lines, they get harder to interpret. I only have about 7 more questions left and all of them make no sense to me. I answer them all to get my heart to stop pounding so quickly and I don’t even care after I click View Results. I know I failed, I didn’t need a screen to tell me I did for sure.
