Standardized (2.1)

She likes to think of things as if they were connected, as if the ultimate outcome were controllable, simply a sum of the requisite steps. The bright halogen light dances across the packet of cellophane in front of her. Two number two pencils border the top of the desk. A good grade on this exam means getting into a good school, which means choice summer internships, which mean a prestigious job at a prestigious firm, which means something. She slides a red hair band over the unruly wisps of her hair and tightens her pony tail. Empty droning from the front of the gymnasium outlines the simple instructions. Her way of thinking, the built up pressure of all those future moments, is the only thing preventing her from leaving. Her future is like an anchor that she drags around to keep her from floating away. The buzzing of the lights invades her skull. She looks out at the rows students, some bored, some terrified, each mechanically slogging through, as if the goal were to mass produce filled-out scantrons. The booklet lies unopened in front of her. She feels on the verge of weakness and thinks of a fragment of a poem she once read about those “who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons”. Pushing her nails deep into the flesh of her right arm, she tells herself that this type of thinking will ruin her. She breaks the paper sealing the test and begins.