Chapter 43: Hurdles Passed

Friday, October 7, 1983

Since it was another football Friday, we wrapped up classes early and headed to the gym for the pep rally, and from there to the stadium. This was technically an away game, but it was against Stratford and they played in the same stadium, so it was about the same difference.

Next weekend the team would be here again for Westchester. Many of us, of course, would be in Austin.

The week after that, we’d go to Alief Elsik (not that far away, as many of us knew well). After that, our remaining games would be right here until the playoffs. The playoffs themselves might be a mess. We’d heard that later rounds would not be in the Astrodome, but might depend on the teams involved. The State championship game would be at Texas Stadium up in Dallas. Depending on the weather in December, that could be great or a disaster.

In the meantime, we had to keep winning to get there. Fortunately, Stratford wasn’t the team to prevent that. This game was as lopsided as last week’s game. Andy had a touchdown seven seconds into the game, and Cal had four sacks in the first quarter, plus two more tackles for loss. The rest of the team played pretty well, too.

It was 21-0 at halftime, 27-7 at the end of the third quarter, and things finished at 34-14. Our third string defense gave up the two touchdowns, but our third string offense scored one, plus one of the field goals.

Depending on the outcome of two other games, Memorial could clinch the district championship in two weeks at Alief Elsik. On paper, at least, none of the remaining district teams posed a major threat, but we’d see.

After the game, we (most of the Study Group crew) headed to Dairy Queen for some dessert (the kind that actually involved sugary frozen stuff). We wound up hanging out for an hour or so, but no one wanted to push things too much with the SATs bright and early tomorrow morning.

We dropped off Paige first. After that, on the way to her house, Jas said, “I’m nervous about tomorrow. I know it’s just the Impostor Syndrome acting up, I really do. But ... it feels scary.”

I squeezed her leg, and Angie said, “You’re going to do fine. I’m worried, and this isn’t my first time taking it. This weekend, even!”

Jas giggled a bit. “Okay, well, that breaks the mood a little! Fine! No more worries.”

“I didn’t mean you can’t be worried, honey,” Angie said. “I just meant that it’s fine to be worried. Steve’s worried.”

Jas looked at me. “No, he’s not!”

I shook my head. “You’re forgetting that I’ve been doing the Impostor Syndrome thing for a long time. Of course I’m worried. It’d completely suck to blow my National Merit Scholarship and it’d also suck to do worse than my PSAT and it’d suck even more to do worse than I did on this the other time.”

“But you’re not going to,” Jas said.

“Yeah, well, I know that, but I also don’t,” I said. “That’s why we do it, just like why Memorial’s going to play the rest of their games. Stuff happens. People make mistakes. I’m mostly sure that it’s just my Impostor Syndrome acting up and that I’ll do just fine, but the stakes are high, especially with the people in this car. Mom and Dad would be just fine if I bombed. They’d just encourage me to try again. You know what a letdown it’d be. I know you’ll support me, but that’s what Impostor Syndrome does — it tells you that the people who know you best will be the ones who’ll be front and center saying ‘Wow, you had us fooled!’”

Jas nodded slowly. “Okay ... I think I believe that. I also think some of it is over the top, but I’m not sure why I think that. Anyway, it helps. I just remember how much you both believed in me last year, and how that worked out. I can do this!”

“And you will,” Angie said.

“Definitely!” I said.

“And both of you will, too!” Jas said.

“We’d better!” Angie said, giggling a bit.

Saturday, October 8, 1983

Taking the SAT is different than taking the PSAT, and both are different from taking something like the GRE. When you’re taking the PSAT, you know that it only matters for under one percent of kids. If you don’t make the National Merit cutoff, it’s a meaningless test. No one cares. If you’re one of those who could make the cutoff but don’t, then it really, really sucks, of course, but that’s still a tiny minority of those who take it.

The SAT is different. If you’re going to college at all, your score is going to matter. It might matter less if you’re in the top ten percent and your state has must-accept rules, or if you’re planning on going to a college with a low bar for acceptance, but it still matters. Your counselor (high school and college, both) will look at it. Schools will report the scores of their graduates. Oh, you can retake it, or take the ACT, but that doesn’t make it matter less, it just gives you more chances.

The GRE, meanwhile, is different in another way. Far fewer people take it. The odds are that you won’t be taking it in a room full of your friends and acquaintances like you will with the SAT. Most of the people taking it are a self-selected bunch who expect to do fairly well.

In later decades, Texas would have mandatory tests that determined whether you graduated or not, but we didn’t have those yet. My kids had gotten through them, but sometimes it felt like half of the school year was spent teaching those tests.

For high school kids in 1983 who planned on going to college, or at least those in Texas, the SAT (or ACT, but most prioritized the SAT) was the high-stakes test. You took it in a room filled with people you knew, all of whom were going to compare notes on it after the fact, rehash questions for days, and then compare scores when they came back. Everyone would know when scores came back, so it’d be pointless to claim yours hadn’t.

It really is a situation tailor-made to trigger Impostor Syndrome and all of the other fears and insecurities everyone has. For my close friends, the hardest part was managing the stress around the test, not the test itself.

That said, we were all good at managing stress.

We headed in with our heads held high, ready and eager to get this done.

A few hours later, we all headed out. It was easy to tell who was feeling good and who wasn’t. I could tell at a glance that all of my friends were feeling just fine about things.

Jas hugged me, then Angie, and then Paige right after the test. “That was ... heck, I’ve had harder tests in all of my classes this year than that! There’s just a lot of it!”

“Quantity and time pressure,” Jimmy said, coming up to us, holding Connie’s hand.

She nodded. “Everyone would do better with more time, but on a lot of it you know it or you don’t.”

Jess looked pleased with herself as she led a bunch of cheerleaders out of the room. I was tempted to call it a gaggle, or a flock, but I wasn’t sure if there was an official collective term for cheerleaders, and Jess would whap me for either ‘gaggle’ or ‘flock.’ Thinking about it, perhaps ‘exaltation’ would do. In any case, she looked pleased, and so did Linda, as well as a number of others who I knew more than I’d ever expected to.

Sue and Gene were perhaps the most nervous of our entire group. Jimmy was so upbeat that he’d tamped down Connie’s nerves, but Sue and Gene reinforced each other’s. It’d been her dream for years to go to an Ivy League or Seven Sisters school, and it was Gene’s dream to follow her and attend a school of similar quality. The SAT was a make-or-break for that dream.

I had no worries about them, but I completely understood their angst. Still, Sue had done terrific during my first go-round, and this Sue was even sharper. Unless the hormones had derailed her (unlikely, in my estimation) she’d just punched her ticket, and so had Gene.

As we headed out of the building, I saw Mike emerge, holding hands with Trish. He didn’t look happy, while she was unreadable. The glare she shot toward Jess was perfectly readable, though, and the one that went in my direction was only slightly more muted.

I hoped Mike hadn’t blown his future, but every action has its consequences. He would land on his feet eventually. He was too smart, and Anderson had too many resources, for him to fail unless he was determined to fail. It just might be a rough journey along the way.

I’m not sure anyone had expected the day to go the way it did, but no one wanted to split up, so a bunch of us — Study Group kids, debaters, Drama kids, and others, pretty much with Angie and me at the core — descended on Fuddruckers for lunch. From there, we went to play mini-golf and drive go-carts, and from there we went to the pizza place.

Along the way, I noticed people who really didn’t know each other very well start down the path to becoming at least casual friends. Oh, most of us knew each other fairly well, but people like Jimmy and Connie barely knew some of the Debate and Drama kids who weren’t involved in Study Group. Matt, Morty, and Emily didn’t either.

After dinner, a few people had to leave (Connie, for instance), but most of us went to the movie theater and bought tickets for ‘Never Say Never Again’. I hadn’t seen it since ... well... 1983, but the basic plot was pretty familiar and Sean Connery did a good job with the role, at least in my opinion. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, too.