It read: Act scores are out!!
I turned pale and froze. I didn't know how to react. I had felt completely confident about my score, but now that the time had come, I panicked. I didn't want to open the score, but after my friends pushed me to I did.
30 long and nervous seconds later, I saw my score: 24. That simple number sent me crumbling down as if I was hit in both legs with a long and cold aluminum pole. I was emotionless. My friends worried, they had never seen me like this. I had never seen myself like this. I stared at that bold number, motionless for 5 minutes until the bell cut my concentration.
As I left the school walls behind me, I kept thinking about that ugly number that was defining my future. However, I noticed I wasn't mad at the number, but at the test system itself. Why is it that us students must always be defined by a number? Why do universities accept you based on a number and not on who you truly are? They may say this isn't the case, but who are we kidding?
I once read a quote that said something like this: "Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree then it will live its whole life thinking it is stupid." That describes what I feel about standardized tests precisely. Why in a time were the norm is calling people unique and special are we still being defined by the same test? There are countless examples of people failing in tests because of nerves or simply because they limit their ability to express themselves, and precisely because of that their futures suffers.
If our society is going to keep going with the labels of “unique” and “special”, then they should let everybody feel that way, not make us all do the same thing. I like to express myself in words and actions, but an ACT doesn’t let me do that. Instead it forces me to sit for four hours straight and answer dull and boring questions that are no good for me. The only reason they exist is to qualify me as a number,but why? That endless question will be there for ages until the bigger problem is solved: Traditional education. What do I mean with that? The old and flawed system of labeling students by grades and with no room for innovation.
Until we stop defining students as numbers or letters and instead do it with qualities and traits education itself will have no hope. Yes, traditional education has created great people, but is it truly because they were defined as numbers or because they had a great professor or mentor that helped them realize their true value?
No student should be defined as a number or letter. Due to that, I won't let my ACT score pull me or my hopes down. I will not let an exam decide my fate no matter what others say. If a university thinks that I am not good enough just because of an exam then they are not good enough for me. I don't want to be in a place that will not value me for who I am, but instead values me because a machine said I was a higher number than another candidate.