Pet Peeve - MTTC Testing

I actually was not a worthless piece of shit today. I took a two hour nap, of course, because my weekends aren't weekends without sleep. I did eight loads of laundry (for someone who wears t-shirts and jeans every day I own a lot of clothing) and straightened my hair (my hair is about two steps away from Afro glory so straightening takes about 45 minutes). Now I'm relaxing with a Landshark. Delicious lager. If they served it at more places instead of just at Journey concerts and one of the many liquor stores by my house, it would be my new beer obsession. Coors Light still reigns. Shit, beer is delicious. (Okay, wow, alchy, sit down.)

But before all of this happened, I did MTTC testing. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's the Michigan Test for Teacher Certification. Essentially the ACT for teachers, I paid almost 200 bucks to take three standardized tests all on one day. If I don't pass the Elementary Education test, I can't student teach. If I don't pass the subject area tests (I took Language Arts and Math), I don't get the certification on my degree. "First day of the rest of my life!" Fuck it.

I always do extremely well on standardized tests because I've been taught nothing but good test taking strategies. My application of shit I learned in school is horrible. Give me a Scantron & a #2 pencil, however, and watch the magic happen! I got a 27 on my ACT. I took it five years ago and I still brag about it. That's how tests have taken over my life. I'm still convinced I would have done better had my test placement not been at a high school in the 'Hood. I got two points higher than my brother who took it almost ten years ago and once Bangs takes it in January, that's one more thing I can hang over her head. (She took the PLAN test, which tells you what careers you should go into and your expected ACT achievement. Where it says expected range for the ACT, it's blank. BLANK. How the fuck is it blank? Is she that bad that it's below the chart?...I can't wait.)

The Basic Skills test is to test your capabilities at the eighth grade level. It was essentially 'Draw a picture of a dog.' 'Cut this sheet of paper on the straight line.' 'Poop in this bag.' The elementary ed was a step above. 'Draw a picture of a dog in the Revolutionary War.' 'Cut this sheet of paper into an interpretation of dramatic play for children.' 'If Ruth poops 8 turds a day and Matt poops 11 turds, how many turds will they have in their bag on day five?' I'm so fucking smart that I don't want anyone to copy my intelligent responses, which is why I always start my tests at the last question and work backwards.

I was in line behind the epitome of Soccer Mom. After I told her how easy the Basic Skills test was, she was telling me how hard the questions were in her practice test manual. Way to go, sucker, for buying a useless book. You can't study for this stuff. Either you can poop in a bag or you can't. An instructional manual on how to poop in a bag isn't going to hold the bag under your ass (although it can be useful when it's time to wipe). Then she was like 'I took my kids to Target yesterday to buy new pencils.' Then she holds up a massive Ziploc bag with nine brand new pencils sharpened to that super sharpness that second graders love because they can break their pencils and that's fun. Ugh. So many people acting like idiots.

The best part? When a van of nuns rolled up and everyone stopped talking. A ton of nuns in the habits and rosaries. Everyone else said 'Whoa.' I said 'It's a sign.' The nuns are calling me, bro. One of those nuns didn't look much older than me. Excuse me, men, where are you? Save me!