DESCRIPTIVE NARRATIVE: AP Testing

            It was a May morning at 7:45 when I swung open the wide grey door to the teacher’s lounge.  The steel staircase was already packed from top to bottom with dozens of anxious students, each clasping a pair of graphite pencils in one hand and a school-borrowed graphing calculator in the other.  One lone student sat on the steps bent over a heavy College Physics textbook.  I saw his eyes frantically scanning over the pages, and I knew that he was desperate to absorb every glob of knowledge the text offered.  The intensity at which he perused his book amidst the nervous murmurs over his head sent an unsettling feeling of discomfort down my stomach.  As I watched slit-images of him through people’s shifting legs, I felt grossly under-prepared for the advanced placement exam.  Every millisecond which he read that book and I did not equated to more knowledge gained against me.  The abandoned book came back to life and suddenly became a most important, covetous gem of knowledge.  Swelling inside me was a primal urge to hoard all the information I can before the exam was administered.  I breathed heavily and felt rationality being overtaken by test-fright.  The student across the stairs was drinking rapidly from the fountain of knowledge, and I wanted to shove everybody aside and put my mouth under the wet tap. 

            It was too late.  At eight o’ clock, the assistant principal swung open the door, holding a brown box of exam booklets high over his head like a holy relic.  My clammy fingers chilled as the exams floated past me over my head and across the students.  With all attention directed towards the assistant principal bearing the AP Physics tests, the anxious murmurs died down.  The atmosphere carried a charged restraint as nervous test-takers exhibited Russian-trained discipline.  He coolly tossed a sealed test booklet on my table; the gust of air it created dried my eyes. 

After getting us started, the principal relaxed over a cup of morning coffee at the front of the room.  For a split second, I envied the proctor’s care-free composure while my heart was pounding over the test that would determine my fate in college.  Thinking no more, I ripped open the red seal line and carefully read the first question.

~The End~

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