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July 16, 2009

Cruel and Unusual Punishment

First an introduction...
Hello everyone my name is Pebble. I have been asked by my friend Stone to do some guest blogging while the infamous Rock is jet setting around the world
(jealous). I'm a little nervous about this whole blogging thing, I'm not the best at English and proper grammar, so please try hard not to judge me. Alright now that the formalities are out of the way, it is time to educate the world.

My first and only topic I would like to educate you on today is a little thing called Cruel and
Unusual punishment. You got the standard acid drip, Chinese Water Torture, finger nail removal, etc. however, by far the worse form of Cruel and Unusual Punishment happens to millions of people around the world daily. This form of punishment is highly unrecognized, comes in many different forms, and perhaps is the most excruciating of all forms of Cruel and Unusual Punishment. What is this horrible thing you may ask? It is STANDARDIZED TESTING AHHHHHH!!!! ACT, SAT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, BAR, the list goes on and on and on. People not only spend months preparing and losing countless hours of sleep, dreading the day they will actually have to take these horrific tests, but the companies actually make you pay to take the test. Talk about adding insult to injury. For those of you who are lucky enough to have escaped this horrific event, let me paint a little picture for you. You show up to a building and walk in the doors. The tension among people is so thick you fear that if you were to sneeze or make any sudden movements your life would be over before you could blink, which at this point may not be the worst thing in the world. Then, some random person comes into the room and says, "Its time." Everyone, including yourself, follows this person like cattle to a table were two individuals are waiting to take anything and everything that maybe a form of comfort from you. If it isn't the proper calculator or #2 standard pencil, it isn't getting in. After being "searched," you proceeded into this room where they continue to inform you of the punishment you are about to go through. The whole time you are thinking, "why is this happening to me? Do I really deserve this all because I want to further my education and better myself." The time constraints, rules, and exceptions are enough to make you contemplate driving the #2 standardized pencil into your hand, hoping that the proctor would have a little compassion and excuse you to go to the hospital. So once you finish the test you think the punishment is over, but nooooo you have to continue to lose sleep waiting for your test results to come. During this time you began to realize just how important this test was. You also spend 99% of your time going over all the things you messed up. Not to mention everyone keeps reminding you that if you don't get a high score, you won't get into any good colleges, and you'll have to go through it all again. UGHH
So as you can see Standardized Testing is by far one of the worst forms of punishment. What can I do to stop this abuse you might ask. Well easy, as my friends from the movie Old School would say, and slightly modified for the purpose at hand, "Rally up some friends, get naked and start the revolution!"
Good Bye

2 comments:

  1. And really, what is the obsession with #2 pencils? Have you ever seen a #1 pencil? A #3? I think it's a conspiracy to drive stressed out people even more insane.

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  2. Thanks for a great post, Pebble. That totally describes my experience when I attempted to get my administrator's license in Colorado. I felt like I was a criminal of sorts. Hope all is well.

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