Personal Narrative

Personal Narrative

The blaring ring of the alarm clock runs through my ears, marking the end of my pleasant six-hour sleep. I’m looking at the time and fumbling my hand next to me, managing to hit the snooze button and relapse back to my sleep. Repeating this several times, I eventually decided to get up, and turned off the alarm. I grabbed the towel lying on top of my chair, and turn around only to sneak a glance at the time. I stumble through the bathroom, flick the light switch brace myself for the glare of the lights as I struggle to open my eyes. After taking a nice, hot shower, I quickly got dressed and made my way to the kitchen. After my breakfast, I woke up my mom and told her to drop me off. She got up, and drove me to school.
While in the car my mom asked “Why were you up so late last night?” I said “Practicing for the PSAT”. Even though I found out just a couple of days ago about the test, I feel confident enough to tackle the PSAT today. I stood up all night, taking some practice tests just to get an image of how well I would do. My math and writing skills were good, while reading was never my greatest strength. Since the test wouldn’t start until 8:30, I sat in the cafeteria with my friends while we discussed the upcoming test. My boy Mike asked, “What did you do last night?” I replied “Nothing much, I pulled an all-nighter trying to study for this damn test.” Eager to get this over with, I was ready to go at 8:20. Stuffing my book bag in my locker and grabbing some #2 pencils and a calculator, I head to my assigned room. After filling out all of the personal information, we were finally ready to take the test. The critical reading comprehension section was first. After starting, I said “Damn this test looks easy. I’m going to pass this”. Answering the first question with complete ease and confidence, I figure this test might be easier than I had thought. Well, my streak ended after the first question. From there, I only went downhill, as the questions increases in difficulty. Despite this, I’m performing pretty well, although I knew I messed up on some of the problems. Putting this aside, I was ready to take on the math section, which is my greatest strength. I’m flying through the second section, completely confident that I have gotten every single problem in the section correct. With plenty of time left over, I start drawing in the test booklet waiting for the third section. It was only then, 5 minutes of the test left, that I notice I forgot to complete one page. Although there were only 3 problems left, I grab my pencil and start pulling off all sorts of calculations, finishing just in time. Laughing at my stupidity, I make a mental note to take the rest of the test more seriously. The third section, again critical reading, posed even harder than the first reading section.
I’m trying finding a pattern in the answers, but realized that the College Board would not let that happen. Although I had experienced a shaky start, I’m dominating the fourth and fifth sections – math and writing, my two best. After a long 2 hours and 10 minutes, the test was finally over. Overall, I’m satisfied with my performance, but thought I could have done better on the reading sections. I comforted myself in the fact that I still had one more year until the test would really count and hopefully I would learn from all this experience. After all the tests were collected, the room burst into conversation and exchange of answers. Tanisha asked “What was the hardest part of the test for you” and I said “The first section was crazy but I think I did
alright”. Comparing my answers with others, I feel pretty confident in my test.
After waiting for the announcement that allowed us to get out of there, I jet out of the room. From the second floor, I ran down to my first floor locker and grabbed my book bag, and then ran back up to the second floor for Chemistry. From the looks of the other students, I could tell everyone was tired and hungry from the test, and the last thing anyone wants to do is be in class indentifying chemical and physical changes. I’m disappointed that the clock didn’t move faster, although every pair of eyes was on it. Finally, the bell rings, and everyone dashed out of the room for lunch. Considering I was starving from a poor breakfast, I got myself two slices of pizza, some fries, and a huge bottle of soda. Content with a good lunch, I sat outside the school until it was time for class. My friends and I are notorious for starting completely random discussions. Today’s random lunch topic involves a debate on who were the coolest students in the Class of ’03. After being nominated as one of the top three, we drop the topic and started talking about other useless stuff, some inappropriate for this
paper. After history passed by fairly quick, I made my way to English. It’s the last class of the day, so I hope it goes by quickly. After getting our test grades back, I’m pleased with my 90, although I could have done better if not for a stupid error. After I got home, I went to take a nice, well-deserved nap for a couple of hours until it was time to eat dinner. After eating a quick dinner, I found out that I have a biology test tomorrow, so I had to study for that. Overall, it wasn’t so bad. I did pretty well on the PSAT, school ended quickly, I had little homework, and I would enjoy a couple more hours of sleep. This taught me to take things more seriously. You might get lucky sometimes but it might not work out that way next time. So be prepared and get your affairs in order to guarantee success.