My SAT superscore after my first attempt at taking the test was a 1250. Following my second attempt it remained a 1250. This was not the fault of a coincidence or a lack of studying on my part, but rather the fault of a small town called Jasper, Oregon--the existence of which I would consider, perhaps, some sort of cosmic oversight.
Originally, I wasn’t planning to take the test again.
“I don’t know, Grace. 1250 is a little low for some of the schools you’re trying to apply to. Students always do better their second time taking the test,” my father told me in an indirect attempt to convince me to take a second SAT. I wasn’t particularly excited about the idea. I had a job that was going to make it hard to make time to take the test, let alone study for it, and I thought that a 1250 was perfectly fine. Because I resisted my dad’s pleas for so long before finally coming around to the idea, I ended up signing up late for the test. With no seats left at any schools in Washington State, the closest testing center became Laurelwood Academy in Jasper, Oregon.
With about a five hour drive ahead of us, my dad and I left the house early Friday morning. I had all of the required materials: a protein bar, a bottle of water, two No. 2 pencils, a TI-84 calculator, a state ID, and my test ticket. I had studied by googling how to use a semicolon the day before we left. I was going to arrive on time and leave my phone in the car and there was going to be no one that could stop me from taking the SAT.
Jasper itself does not have any hotels so we had to stay the night at a Holiday Inn in the next town over. Our experience of this Holiday Inn should have been my first clue that some higher power--God, or perhaps even The College Board--was testing me. Immediately down the street, and visually identical to our Holiday Inn, was a second Holiday Inn. We arrived at the front desk of what we thought was our and hotel and my dad gave the desk attendant our name. He clacked it into his keyboard before looking momentarily confused.
“I’m sorry. It looks like we don’t have you in our system.”
“Maybe we have the wrong Holiday Inn,” my dad suggested.
“Oh yeah! We get guests from the other one all the time, they get guests from us. It’s really funny,” the man said casually, “You might try going to them.” He spoke as if this idea would not have occurred to him if my dad hadn’t introduced it. Baffled that this man didn’t seem to grasp that two of the exact same hotel neighboring each other was an issue because of this exact situation, my dad and I drove to the next Holiday Inn, got our room keys, and went to bed.
It was the morning of the test and I was unenthused, but ready. I put on my most presentable pair of sweatpants, gathered my necessary materials, and we began our drive into Jasper. The town of Jasper, itself, is situated entirely along Jasper Road, and the only building you can drive past that isn’t concealed from the road by trees is the Jasper store where, on a crisp, overcast Saturday morning, residents of the town enjoy standing idly outside and staring, narrow-eyed, at Washington rental cars with California license plates as if to say “You’re not from ‘round here, are you?” It was hospitality like this that kept us from making any stops on our way to Laurelwood Academy.
We arrived at the address we entered into Google Maps--a building that matched the picture printed on my test ticket. There was no one that was going to stop me from taking the SAT, and upon our arrival, that was exactly who greeted us: no one. With about fifteen minutes before the official start time of 8AM, there was not a single other car parked outside of the building. We decided to go inside this underwhelming school. The front door was unlocked. As we wandered in, we noticed that there was barely any furniture, and not a single person to proctor the test. Once we were inside, we could see that the back door was slightly open. We walked through to the back of the school where we ran into a local woman on her morning jog and asked her if she knew anything about the test.
“Oh no, I don’t know anything about a test,” she informed us, “but this is an Adventist boarding school right now. There’s students asleep in the rooms upstairs. They’re probably going to wake up for church soon.” This only raised more questions. Why would they host the SAT in a place that had church on Saturdays? Why was the back door open if there were kids asleep upstairs?
“Ok, thank you anyway.”
We went back through to the front of the building where there were now about three other high-schoolers with their parents, there to take the SAT.
My dad and another girl’s dad tried to piece together what was going on.
“Maybe we have the wrong address? Maybe the school had a separate building where the test is being administered?”
With about ten minutes left until the test was supposed to start, we got back in our cars and drove up and down Jasper Road in search of anywhere that might be the real testing center. We all ended up back at Laurelwood. This was definitely the right place; the address matched, the picture on the test ticket matched, we couldn’t find any other school nearby. Five minutes before the test was supposed to start, we were all gathered in the parking lot, unsure of our next steps, when a local man arrived, claiming he used to go to school at Laurelwood and that he knew the person who ran the school and they would never do something like hosting a test on a Saturday.
My dad and the other parents and students were rightfully upset, but I could only be entertained. Certainly I was disappointed too, but I felt like I was witnessing the cacophonous finale to the most bizarre symphony of events I’ve ever experienced. Phone calls to The College Board were being made by the angry parents, but there wasn’t much left that could be done. It was now 8AM and all over America, students were opening their approved test packets, and we were in Jasper, Oregon: a town with very little to prove yet somehow manages to disappoint. When we all came to terms with the fact that none of us were going to be taking the test that day, we all parted ways. As my dad and I drove back out of Jasper Oregon, the entire town felt almost like I had dreamed it, or like we had made a wrong turn somewhere into an altered state of reality, another timeline where the SAT didn’t exist. I wondered if perhaps it was foolish of me to assume something like this wouldn’t happen.
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