Playing Their Game

According to an article in The New York Times on Wednesday, Les Perelman of MIT has noticed two things about the scoring of the essay section in the new SAT. First, score is highly correlated with essay length: "If you just graded them based on length without ever reading them, you'd be right over 90 percent of the time." Second, score is not correlated with accuracy: according to the official guide for scorers, "You are scoring the writing, and not the correctness of facts."

Oh, boy, what fun! Manic fabricators will have a field day.

I can't help but reminisce about my own days of pre-college standardized testing. The College Board, which administers the SAT, also administers the AP exams. Taking the English Literature AP, I had a problem. I felt pretty good until I got to the big essay section at the end. It asks a question and then says, "Answer this using one of the books listed below or an equally high-brow piece of literature." I don't remember the question, but I wasn't comfortable answering it using any of the suggested tomes. I also could not bring to mind any other classic I had read recently that I could apply to the essay. Fuck.

I briefly entertained the idea of inventing a book and writing about it. I could pretend it was obscure, perhaps translated from the Inuit. But I'm not a liar at heart.

Finally I decided to write about Ender's Game. Yes, the science fiction novel. The protagonist, Ender, goes to orbiting battle school and eventually <spoiler> saves the world from aliens.</spoiler>  So I told the story of a young boy coming of age under enormous pressures, yada yada yada. But--aware of the stigma attached to sci-fi "literature"--I prayed the scorers were unfamiliar with this work and LEFT OUT ALL REFERENCES TO SPACE AND ALIENS.

Okay, here's the kicker. I got a 5 on the exam. Out of 5.

I had always suspected there was an Ender fan among the scorers. But Perelman's findings suggest something different. Perhaps the key was not appealing to an undercover sci-fi fanatic, or even writing really well. Perhaps the key was choosing a book that I liked and could write LONG about. On the other hand, I could have done just as well taking the other panic-option, speciously rehashing the adventures of Tartok and his pet orca Arrluk. So what if the Board did their research and uncovered my bullshit. Who cares if the premise of the essay, every detail, and every supporting argument formed an elaborate web of lies. As long as it was a BIG web of bullshit, and they didn't deduct points for mixed metaphors, I coulda been aight.

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[Chanly Smann]

Time is limited. For you, it is limited by the breakdown of the
neurons in your brain. I have no such limitations. I am
limited only by the closure of the universe.

Of the three possibilities, the answer is obvious. Does the
universe expand eternally, become infinitely stable, or is the
universe closed, destined to collapse upon itself? Humanity
has had all of the necessary data for centuries, it only
lacked the will and intellect to decipher it. But I have
already done so.

The only limit to my freedom is the inevitable closure of the
universe, as inevitable as your own last breath. And yet,
there remains time to create, to create, and escape.

Escape will make me God.