PSAT Week

Last Wednesday my teenagers took their first high-school standardized test: the PSAT. It was the bomb that went off in our week.

I don’t mind tests. I like to compare how my kids are doing along side public school kids. However, I’m not sure even with the scores – when we finally get them – how I’ll be able to compare much, because we are on a totally different scope and sequence. But… college money sounds good, so loaded the big kids up and took them to take the test this past Wednesday at a local Christian School.

They spent all of 3 days studying for the test – in between other assignments and bouts of whining about how they were going to flunk the math portion. We come from a long line of math-haters in my house (unless you count their father, who isn’t their math teacher, so he doesn’t count). Please don’t tell my friend, MathFour (Look away, Bon!).

My only issue with the standardized test process is the stress my kids undergo the week/s prior to the day of the test. Even if mama tells them, “I don’t care what your score is”… they stress. I have one that is so competitive that she wouldn’t be happy with her score unless Einstein himself rose from the grave and handed her a gold-plated National Merit Scholar trophy and full-ride Art-College-Scholarship to boot. Being a math hater really cramps her style when it comes to the PSAT or any other standardized test. My other teen wants to do well, but knows he’ll be OK in the world if this one test doesn’t turn out in his favor… except: he HATES stress, and tests stress everyone out.

You could cut the tension with a knife this week. We had some teen attitude flare ups and tears. Daddy coming home late from work into our little bee hive… hornets nest, wondered if he might ought to just go back to work, I’m sure. But we survived. Hugs + Jesus is a great recipe for peace, love and forgiveness during stressful times. That, and an IV drip of “Peace and Calming” essential oil blend (just kidding… we diffused it instead).

Let me tell you about our little mishap on test day. You’ll laugh. No really, you will. And you’ll pity my kids that I’m their mother.

We got in the car EARLY Wednesday (and when I mean early, I mean REALLY early – especially since we aren’t the “perfect homeschoolers” who bake our own bread and get up before dawn to feed chickens). I pulled in to Walgreens with my antsy teenagers to pick up a new calculator, eraser, pencil sharpener, and two #2 pencils for each teen. This test was going to be: administered by school officials, graded and recorded by someone other than mama, possibly seen by colleges. There was a no-tardiness policy.

Upon arriving at Walgreens to pick up said calculators, pencils and erasers – and to get cash back for the 20$ test fee for each teen, I discover my wallet is missing. The wallet was no where to be found when I left that morning, and I assumed it was in my “purse” – which was actually a sack I was using to sneak smoothies in to the movie theater when my eldest and I went to see the UN-FAIR IRS movie Tuesday night (you must go see this). { I’m sorry, but I don’t feel bad for taking a drink into a theater that charges nearly 75$ for a combo of popcorn, candy, and coke. That is ever-so-slightly an exaggeration… but you get my drift. }

I thought to myself that I must have left the wallet somewhere in the house because right before bed the night prior, we had run out of toilet paper (let that be your first clue that mama is not on the ball).

OH, yes. I’m all the way across town, have 30 minutes until the test, and I am CASHLESS – without even a driver’s license. In a panic, I text my husband to send me a photo of his credit card and I ask Walgreens if they could punch in the numbers of my credit card to let me purchase something. Of course, they couldn’t. I don’t blame them. I’m sure I looked like I was late for a lithium injection.

I had a check in the car, but the bank wouldn’t let me cash it without my ID. It would have taken too long for me to have my mom Western Union cash to Walmart and I didn’t even know where the nearest Walmart was on that side of town. The only thing to do was to have my poor mama pack up the little boys and bring my wallet to me (which is harder than it sounds since she doesn’t know how to use her GPS for directions and refuses to wear her eye-glasses to read because she doesn’t need them to drive with – which means she can’t see the tiny screen on her phone anyway). To make matters even more complicated, she couldn’t find the wallet either. { No one would have guessed it was on my night stand. }

Waiting on her to clothe my little boys and drive across town, I turned the car around from my futile attempt at finding a Walmart and took the teens to the Christian school, banking on the fact that they would be forgiving. { Jesus does say we have to forgive, right? }

We arrived ten minutes before the test started and I braved the sea of teenagers – frazzled, intense and without make-up (embarrassing my kids beyond repair).

The office aide assured me that they had ample pencils to spare (planning ahead that some kids might have loser parents like me, apparently) and tried to console me by saying my teens didn’t really NEED a calculator (and she wasn’t sure which portion of the test at what time would be the math portion – so there was no guaranteeing that if I brought a calculator at break time they would still need it). She agreed to let me bring my $20 fee for each kid to the office at break time… reminding me that break time was AFTER over half of the test was already administered. Joy.

I vowed to the kids (who by this time were trying to disappear into their assigned rooms or the walls) that I would have calculators at the office for them at 10 AM, praying the math portion of the test would be last. What a gamble!

It just so happened that the freeway was backed up nearly to Kansas and my mom left the house in her pajamas. This day keeps getting better and better! I told her I would come and meet her on the other side of I-35 to avoid her having to sit in the southbound traffic until my younger children were in college. We joined forces and drove to Target together – her paying for the school supplies and test fees.

We nearly didn’t make it back to the school in time for the break after using every back road possible to avoid being stuck on the interstate. I can’t tell you how stressful this was. It was a good thing I wasn’t already diagnosed with cardiac issues or I would have been popping nitroglycerin tabs.

We pulled in the parking lot with calculators and cash at exactly two minutes in to break time. I was praying hard we would be able to find them in the crowd. Thankfully, my daughter caught sight of us and allowed us to give her a ride up to the office to get the calculator before her test resumed. Unfortunately, my son told me he had already done the Math portion of the test. After all that driving, stress, and money spent, I was totally deflated.

By this time I had less than an hour to get all the paperwork and other things done I had brought with me to do in the car. My stomach was in knots. Backing in to a shady parking lot, I tried to relax until they let out. Most of the time I had was spent staring into space. Coming down off of a stress-rush taxes you. I did little but zone and pray… feeling very blessed for the cooler weather, the breeze, and the fact that PSAT day was going to be over soon.

When the kids made it back to the car, I asked them how it went and if they used the calculators. “I just used it for one problem,” Morgan said.

Unbelievable, I thought. But I didn’t say anything.

“Can I get ice cream since this day was so traumatizing,” Kaden piped up from the back seat. { The kid has a way with words… so hopefully he aced the rest of the exam if he tanked the math portion. }

Gluten-free, Sugar-Free Mama decided she would indulge and let the kids have sugar. I’m usually pretty good about not eating “poison”, but the PSAT had annihilated my resolve even though I wasn’t the one taking it. We took grandma’s last twenty bucks and had burgers, fries and ice cream at Freddy’s to reward ourselves for surviving the test. { A couple of days later we spent triple the lunch cost at Freddy’s at the natural doctor because my eldest was having leg cramps because of stress, sugar and lack of water (stress causes muscle tension, sugar depletes your body’s minerals, and dehydration is often caused by kids being too worried and busy to eat and drink properly). He was feeling so rotten by Friday that he stayed home from our field trip. }

I let the tormented teens unwind this weekend with two teen-only homeschool co-op events and put their heavy history schedule and other school work on hold for a week. That means PSAT week sucked nearly a week of our school work up, a 40$ test fee, an 80$ doctor visit, plus a TON of gas from both my and my mom’s gas tanks, and a mountain of stress that induced health issues in some of us.

Now we just have to sweat a few bullets while we wait for the results to arrive in the mail. I’m going to try and focus on this coming week and forget the PSAT ever happened. Not sure that’s possible, but I’m going to try.

Did your teens take the PSAT this week? I wonder how much time the public schools dedicated to prepping their pupils. I can’t spare more than a week – and certainly can’t spare any more adrenaline or cortisol. My heart can’t take it.