You have been scouring the College Board website for hours, trying to sign up for what will become the bane of your existence- the SAT.

Question after question. They want to know you- your address. Your age. Your hobbies. Your parents’ level of education. Your… interests.
You know you don’t have interests anymore. You’re not human and you haven’t been for a while, you realize as you scroll endlessly down the abyss-like questionnaire.

You make it through the questionnaire after eons. They ask you for money. You have paid CollegeBoard, the friendly nonprofit, thousands of dollars over your high school career.
You pay the $50. College Board yanks the money from your quivering hands, then sneers a smile. Huh. You never realized they had so many teeth.

The SAT is on a dreary Saturday morning. The sky is grey and angry, reminiscent of a black hole.
You munch on a breakfast of stale cereal as you look at your admission ticket. BRING THIS TICKET TO THE TEST CENTER! it shouts. It is not a suggestion.
You bow to yet another one of College Board’s demands. You acknowledge your status as a slave of academia as you swallow, and nearly choke on, your dark black coffee. You cringe as you feel the heat burning your esophagus as the scalding hot coffee courses down your throat.

You make it to the test center, a public school. The fluorescent gymnasium lights shine so bright that a small, weak group of students are huddled in the corner of the room, cowering and moaning in pain.
Perhaps they are sacrifices to the SAT gods. Poor souls.
You take a seat as fellow miserable, overworked souls start to stream into the classroom you were assigned. You find time to have a quick existential crisis as the other students settle into their seats.

The proctor announces that you are not allowed to have pens. Only pencils. Or else.
Calvin Goldberg raises his hand and announces that he only brought pens.
The men in black stroll into the room and wordlessly restrain Calvin, who is kicking and screaming. They drag him towards the door.The doors slam shut and you and your partners in misery never see Calvin again.
The proctor tells you that Calvin never existed. Then she smiles. You never realized that she had so many teeth.
The proctor is College Board Incarnate. She wears a t-shirt with the number 91 on it and is munching on some nuts.

The proctor begins to hand out the SAT test packet and answer booklet. She places one onto your desk and looks at you. You stare back. Her dark, black eyes remind you of the void.
Thus begins an endless loop of bubbling your name in, over and over, like the good little soulless, robotic zombie that the public education system has turned you in to. As you write in your home address for the third time, you begin to wonder what is real and what isn’t.

You have been bubbling in your information for so long that you begin wandering if there was some kind of warp in the space-time continuum. There was.

Millennia pass. Your hand aches and you have developed carpal tunnel. To your dismay, the proctor announces that it’s time for Section 1: The Essay.
Oh well. You can always amputate your hand after the test.
As you read the prompt, you think back to what your SAT tutor told you- College Board disapproves of creativity. Do NOT think out of the box. Be a robot. Be a sheep. An intro, three paragraphs, a conclusion.
  If you’re creative, you may end up like poor Calvin Goldberg.
You begin furiously writing, picking up a new, sharpened pencil for each paragraph because the points keep getting dull. At one point, some kid’s pencil snaps in half. You and all the other students in the room ignore the pencil’s screams.
At the twenty minute mark, you decide that your essay is appropriately banal and sheep-friendly. You read your essay over and sit back, watching the poor souls around you struggle to finish their essays before time is called. Above your head, beyond the blinding public-school fluorescent lighting, the SAT gods laugh in derision.
Time is finally called. You know it’s time for your least favorite SAT ritual: signing the agreement binding your soul to College Board.
You read the damned statement to yourself under the watchful eyes of your proctor, Mrs. SAT Incarnate. You sign your name in perfect cursive, making sure none of the loops of your letters go out of the box.
Section 2 comes. It’s a reading section. One of the passages is about selfies, and College Board meant for it to be humorous. You force a smile to yourself. College Board wants you to think it’s funny. You know you must laugh. Or else.
It’s break time. The kid in front of you takes out his snack, a banana. It’s brown and moldy. The banana blinks at you as he peels it. You quickly get up and go to the bathroom. In the stall, you flush the toilet and see God’s face in the water ripples.
The break ends and it’s back into the void. As you go through the sections, the following thoughts come to your mind:
  What does milieu mean?
  If I pick two pencils of  out of a box, what is the probability that one will be green and the other    blue?
  Is the narrator mostly jiving and jovial in this passage? Or joyful and sarcastic?
  What is the BEST answer?
These are the questions that determine your acceptance to college. These are the questions that are imperative to your future.
These questions will decide whether you succeed or end up living in a box on Madison Avenue.
During Section 8, you find yourself getting increasingly distracted and annoyed. The girl in front of you won’t stop crying, and the proctor, Mrs SAT Incarnate, does nothing but sit behind her desk and smirk at the girl’s misery.
Mercifully, the test ends. Psychologically damaged, emotionally and physically scarred, and spiritually drained, you and your equally defeated peers rise up and begin to proceed out of the room, each receiving a demonic grin from SAT Incarnate as you walk out. As you walk past SAT Incarnate, you tap on her stomach. She’s hollow inside.
A few weeks later you sluggishly log onto your collegeboard account to check your scores. Rather than numbers, you see words: DEBT, CORRUPTION, MISERY, and SERVITUDE.
These are the scores you have slaved for; these are the scores that define you.