Tuesday, March 10, 2009

You Can't Spell Satan Without SAT

I'd like to see the SAT scores of the moron who came up with the SATs. He was probably some kid named Stephen Andrew Trotsky who was turned down for Homecoming by way of the following note passed in class:

So Susie, do you think you would like to go to Homecoming with me?

Let me put it to you this way, Stephen goes with Susie as vegetarians go with
A) Steak
B) Hamburgers
C) Lamb Chops
D) Veal

And so the cycle of hatred and pain continued. Outraged that Susie could be so cold, Stephen swore that he would forever torture high school girls and their boyfriends with analogies of his own making. He would render their four years of homework and term papers useless by making his test the only true road to higher education. But he wouldn't stop there, he would schedule this ultra important test for seven in the morning, and students would be registered to take their tests the next county over, ensuring a wake up time before sunrise. Then he would fill the test with essays such as, "Keeping in mind the didactic sycophantism of late 19th century Prussia, please explain why Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade is the only PG-13 Indiana Jones film of the eighties even though The Temple of Doom is more violent (use as many quotes from Hobbes' Leviathan as possible).
To solidify his revenge, Stephen would forever imprint the pain of this near-impossible test on the testers' minds in the form of his initials: SAT.
Well, unfortunately for the world's students, his plan was believed to be impressive because by this time he had earned several letters after his name, which magically rendered everything he said as meaningful (his Ph.d was actually in the field of "Interpretation of the works of Dr. Seuss in light of pre-Cold War Russia" but no one ever thought to check).
And thus, the SAT was born.
This is my favorite version of the SAT origin story, because it's a very human story about a cold man who left his heart in sixth period Geometry with a note of rejection. I much prefer this to the origin story that involves a committee that was given millions of dollars in order to produce seemingly the dumbest test in human history, when the money would have been better spent ensuring that the number of raisins in Raisin Bran was upped to three scoops.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Truer words have never been spoken