The Learning curve from Hell

"You will not be penalized for guessing. Only wrong and blank answers will be counted against you." --ACT instructions


I never once cheated on a test at school.

Know why?

I hear you, you say, "Because you're such a sweetheart, you wouldn't compromise yourself." or "You're too naive, it probably didn't occurr to you."

Wrong. Although I would like to think those things you say about me are true, no one seems to look beyond the sweet exterior to the structure underneath. The reason I never cheated at school, was because I was always the girl with the answers. I was the one whose paper you looked at when you were in school.

You see, I felt that as some misguided joke of the universe I was placed in a scocial standing to which I never belonged. I knew it, even if nobody else did. So, I worked very hard at proving my abilities in everything. Every subject, every sport, every elective. I was that kid who made the learning curve a living hell for you. You probably hated me secretly, but I'm very aware it was just envy.

As I have gotten older I am learning the ever present lesson of life, that it has no pat answers, that life is a test you cannot study for. Imagine.

When I was preparing to take my SAT my junior year in high school I absolutely couldn't believe that my teachers were telling me I couldn't study for it. Rubbish. There has to be a way to study, it's a test! I just have to find a way. Maybe there's a secret society of students who really know the study pattern and only pass the hidden secret along to a brotherhood of students with a secret handshake.

I guess my point in all this is simply, as told me by a friend earlier, life is an adventure. It's not pass or fail. It's a ride. I need to be reminded of those things occasionally. Only because my "id" gets out of controll and I begin to think everything is a test. There are somethings I don't have the answers to, no matter how hard I try to prepare. I find more and more as an adult that I am guessing at my answers to the great and mysterious questions in life. Sometimes I'm right, sometimes I am wrong, but neither is because I really know what I'm talking about.

Isn't it comforting to think that God is much like the ACT board. Where only a failure to try is really failure.

LIVE YOUR LIFE. DIE WITH YOUR BOOTS ON.