Imagine this: Freshman year of high school you take the PSATs, but you don't take it that seriously so you try a little mixed with some guessing. More guessing than actually trying, but that's okay. Then, sophomore year, you take the PSATs again. You take it way more seriously and actually try to get a good score. Now it's junior year and it's getting close to the SATs, you start studying and you're feeling relaxed about taking it. Then you get to your testing location, sit down in the testing room, they hand out the SAT booklet, and you feel a sudden rush of hopelessness. I bet this scenario was easy to imagine since it was probably you, and it was me on April 11th.

The SATs were two weeks ago for juniors, and I am stressed out about what my score is going to be. I barely studied for the SATs. I had such a hard time managing time between school work, extracurriculars, and studying. I wasn't stressed about taking the test, so I completely scribbled it out of my list of things to do.

I thought that since I'm good at reading and writing, that my reading and writing portion and my essay were going to be fine and all I was going to have to worry about were the two math portions. When I started reading the first passage for the reading portion, it hit me like a ton of bricks that I should have put a little more thought into this. Now I'm freaking out, and I keep telling myself that I should have studied the math portions more.

It's less stressful when you're not in the testing room, but when you get in the room; all you hear is silence. And the silence is intimidating.

You're trying your best to answer the questions as correctly as possible, but you're also trying to finish every section before the time's up. It starts to get frustrating because you have to find a way to go slow enough to understand what's being asked but fast enough to finish in time. I guarantee you won't always finish on time because no one can do that.

I went into the room thinking that I could get at least 1,000 the first time, but I left the room thinking maybe an 850 would be more realistic. I know I'm going to take the SAT a second time and I'm okay with that, but I want my first score to be good. I want my score to be better than 850.

When I take the SAT the second time, I want something that can help me get a better score. I want something to build on, something to help me study for the next time I take this text.

I have two thoughts about my scores; I want them to surprise me but I also want them to be decent enough. I want my score to be good but I want it to show me my weaknesses and where I should study harder for the second time. When I take my SAT the second time, I want to study and get 1,200. I want my scores to show how hard I work not how smart I am.