By Audrey VanVenRoy
After you finish brushing your teeth in the bathroom, you begin heading to bed, tucking yourself underneath the covers. You grab your nearby Bob the Blobfish, Hug-a-Lump—which is definitely not a real product, and is definitely not on my bed right now—and slowly drift off to sleep.
Soon, your mind shifts into a state of dreaming, as you sit at a traditional school desk, but you’re not in a traditional school. You’re in a ginormous dark room with thousands of desks occupying it, with students just like you sitting at them on their laptops. They wear headphones and earpieces to listen to them, their faces unable to be distinguished. You can’t find the exit doors, since the room is too big to find them, and it’s too dark to see anything.
All you see is the bright screen of your own laptop, the glare of light showcasing the typed words on the screen, saying in the clearest of English:
“Write this equation in base-e logarithm.” You start screaming at the horrifying sight, and all of a sudden, you wake up in your bed, the early morning sun shining through your window. It was all just a horrible dream, just a figment of your imagination. Suddenly, the door opens, as one of your family members tells you to wake up, since you’ll be heading out for standardized testing. You realize that it wasn’t a dream and you will be experiencing it in real life. You scream again, causing the family member to be very confused and asking you what is wrong.
…terrifying story, huh? It’s terrifyingly realistic too. It’s something that teenagers all around the country do, and it doesn’t always get easier. However, what will always help with academic ventures and everything outside of school is preparation.
Preparing comes in a variety of ways, and it’s very important not just for standardized testing, but for the testing for different modules in our high school courses, like that algebra test that’s sitting in the back of your mind.
As for me, I……am not super great at preparing for tests. I’ll study appropriately for certain courses that need it, like algebra, by writing down notes and memorizing equations, but for other courses, I generally just do practice Kahoots/Gimkits if they have them. I prefer Gimkits, since they tend to repeat the questions so I can redo them and memorize the answers. It’s pretty helpful, and it’s a fun way to study for tests.
Another way that I like to prepare for tests is to prepare my mindset, like sleeping for a suitable amount of time and taking breaks whenever I need it just to clear my head. I think this is very helpful for me especially since I get a little distracted and tired whenever I haven’t slept long enough or have been staring at my computer all day.
My test prep habits have been…minimal over the years, admittedly, besides getting enough sleep and breaks and the like. However, many of us don’t even do that first step, so it’s important that we take the time to understand how we learn and study the best, allowing us to push through testing for all of our courses.
While I am still not done with that journey, I can certainly try to guide people towards that journey and provide some advice for the people who haven’t even started it. Not to mention, everyone has different ways of learning and preparing, so it’s not worth it to try to align with one person’s view of what is the ideal test preparation routine.
Now, though the dreaded state testing will be arriving soon, don’t be scared. Just put in your best effort and keep moving forward! You’ve got this!!
