The room is quiet, we are taking a test.
I bubble in an answer on my sheet from the booklet of the SAT Reasoning Test. The administrator of the test stands next to the board, a young women in her twenties, she checks the time and writes "25" indicating the amount of time left to complete this section. Before the test started she read to us the rules from a paper she had on her desk. She read it as if it was recording, monotonous and cold, no cheating or disturbing, the usual.
We are all holding our no.2 pencils in our hands, filling in the bubble that has the number corresponding to the right answer. If x equals 2y, bubble. What is Maya Angelou referring to, bubble. If 20 men work at Acme how many women do, bubble. There I was in the bubble bath getting ready for the party, college. What are the different viewpoints of the two writers, bubble. If it needs a period, bubble. Of the five bubbles per question one is right, the other four are just wrong. There is no middle ground, not just in the math section, even in the critical reading section. Is it a theory or fact, bubble. The test administrator wrote "18", the amount of minutes left to do this section. If I want to get to college there is one thing I need to do, bubble.
The tests are usually administrated in public schools on weekends. I think that was the first time I sat in a classroom, you know, one in which they teach these stuff. The walls were bare, as any government run building. The plumbing was visible to anyone who can afford an extra moment while taking the test to look up. There was a board and bookshelves and windows. Windows unlike the ones we had in yeshiva, frosted and locked. These windows were huge, see through and open.
It's through these windows that I heard the song rising from a car zapping by. I think I'm gonna ah, ah, ah, ahhh.
The boy sitting behind me, about my age and clearly bored by the questions that required him to focus, picked up on the song and started humming it. DIstubia, eh eh ahh. Irritated I tried to tune him out. I looked at the women giving the test expecting her to say something to the boy, evidently she didn't notice anything. I kept on looking at her hoping she'd notice, as I was watching, I noticed her.
She looked about twenty five / twenty six. She had straight black hair till about her shoulders, her eyes were a greenish blue. Her skin tone was light, but not pale, her posture was strong and tall, the kind that sends the message "I got it under control". She wore a green top that hung loosely on her chest and jeans that appeared like scaffolds molding her thighs. How did I not notice her?
Am I going crazy?! I'm taking the test, not just any test, the SAT! there will be plenty of girls in college, what am I doing? The boy was still humming Disturbia, and my mind started thinking about the song.
No more gas, in the rig, can't even get it started
Nothing heard, nothing said, can't even speak about it
All my life, on my head, don't wanna think about it
Feels like I'm going insane, yeah
Yes I'm going insane. I have never taken a test. In Yeshiva a test was a discussion, all you needed to do to survive was familiarity with the subject and the ability to play around with words a bit. For every question there was at least five right answers. what mattered during the test was the test giver, manage to impress him and you're good. I remember when I went to my future rosh yeshiva for an intake test to his school. I botched up one question, seeing the waters I'm in I quickly quoted a gemurrah that says something similar (although not related to the topic we were concerned with). Impressed by my knowledge, a smile appeared on his face and we went on. With the SAT's there is no one to impress. A machine will review my answers and assign me a number.
How am I to know how to give a yes or no answer, when everything in the yeshiva world isn't. These questions were so foreign. In yeshiva you had to choose which "depends" you want to go with. Can you inherit your assets to a yet to be born child, depends (what's the state of a fetus, what's the process of inheritance, what is inheritance when the owner is still alive). Can you sell yet to be acquired truma , depends (What is truma, what is truma before you aliquot it, does your final action prove your initial intent). Can you trust someone's confession of forging a contract, depends (What is the value of a contract, a convention or a decider, is there an initial trust of a person's words or not). For every question you have at least five depends, all right. Not five bubbles, four wrong one right. There I was with my "depend" wired brain being fried by a bubbling pot.
It's a thief in the night to come and grab you
It can creep up inside you and consume you
A disease of the mind it can control you
It's too close for comfort
But, after all, this is what I wanted. I wanted college so I left yeshiva. I wanted education and for that I will need to do some bubbling. In Yeshiva everything was up in the air, everything depended on everything ever said, forever perpetuated in inconclusive discussions. If you struggle with a question and then come up with an answer, your answer might or might not survive, but the question will carry on. It will be asked again and again no matter how many answers you come up with, because the discussion is what is important not the conclusion.
Yet I wanted more, I wanted the feeling of continuity in my intellectual musings, not mental fixation. I wanted my thoughts to be part of the accumulation of knowledge, part of the ascent towards full awareness. And here I have it, in the five bubbles in front of me, each bubble is the end result of a conclusive discussion, each bubble is a foundation for further inquiry and discussion. In front of me was the promised land of definitive thought, I was in the city of blinding lights.
Put on your break ights, you're in the city of wonder
Ain't gon' play nice, watch out you might just go under
Better think twice, your train of thought will be altered
So if you must falter be wise
Your mind's in disturbia, it's like the darkness is light
Disturbia, am I scaring you tonight?
Disturbia, ain't used to what you like
Disturbia, disturbia
Thomas Kuhn in his famous book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions claims that the nature of the scientific discourse is through paradigm shifts. Every time there is a new revolutionary idea there occurs a paradigm shift. A paradigm shift is when the accepted questions and methods change. After each paradigm shift there is a period of fine tuning, during that period people just spend time revising and perfecting the new ideas introduced during the shift until a new paradigm emerges, one that can resolve questions the previous one couldn't.
I wanted to be part of a paradigm shift, not a periodic paradigm. What I wanted was the freedom of questioning solidified by past scholarship. In a sense, I think I wanted both worlds. I wanted the elusiveness of a Yeshiva discussion bedded on the concreteness of modern academia. I thought I can have that in the paradigm shift. In the popular science book I read it all sounded like that, open ended questions followed by strings of possible answers. Yet, I failed to realize that shifts in paradigms play but a small role in the conventional schooling of minds. A paradigm shift can't be hunted or pinned down, you can't force a paradigm to change. A paradigm changes when bubbles bust, when answers don't satisfy.
In Yeshiva the discussion was at the mercy of the discusser, discourse emerged from one's willingness to do so. Here in this classroom, discourse happens when there is recognition of failure within the excepted system. If I wanted ideas with concrete backgrounds I had to hand it over to the ideas to run the show. I have to let the idea decide if it's time for a paradigm shift or not. Till that time I need to continue bubbling. The women at the board wrote "6" indicating the amount of time left to take the test.
Faded pictures on the wall, it's like they talking to me
Disconnecting on calls, the phone don't even ring
I gotta get out or figure this shit out
It's too close for comfort, oh
It's a thief in the night to come and grab you
It can creep up inside you and consume you
A disease of the mind it can control you
I feel like a monster, oh
The boy behind me was still humming. During the breaks I heard him talk to some friends about test taking strategies. "Didn't Mr. X talk about these kind of questions" "Hasn't Ms. Y mentioned that technique". The people around me were all doing the usual tricks, skip to the easiest question, eliminate wrong answers, etc. It is then that I realized that both, the Yeshiva world and the secular world have copped out of the question and answer mind set.
To honestly pursue the vicissitudes of intellectual discussion requires a duality of mind. The ability to be fluent in the language of doubt where possibilities are endless, and the capacity to recognize certainty with all the surprises it brings along. The languages of doubt and certainty are diametrically opposed. Doubt rests on the slippery mind, where the past guides with elusive direction towards an unknown end happily encountering previous thoughts. Certainty and conclusion are rigid and irreverential, a recognized end can renounce all of the past calling a revision of all that has been said. With certainty one is confined to the idea and it's framework.
My Yeshiva and this classroom have copped out of this challenge. Yeshiva chose the vernacular of questions endowing their students with the ability to endlessly run around ideas never facing the inflexible, never revising the disproved. And this classroom has seen the universe of question and answers as a system to be played by with rules, juxtaposing their students on the outside of the storm. Around me were people not questioning or answering, they were probing a machine that will assign them a number that will tell someone how good they are at playing the rules of the game called academia. The nomadic mind pursuing the solace of certitude has no place in either.
Release me from this curse I'm in
Trying to maintain but I'm struggling
If you can't go-o-o
I think I'm gonna ah, ah, ah, ah
The women at the board indicated the the test is over and we should put our pencils down. All around me people were stretching their limbs and smiling to their friends sitting at their sides. The test was over, all the preparation, all the anxiety, all the memorizing is now over. In a couple of weeks from now all of us will get a letter that will contain a number that will follow us around as we all go to college. You are your score. I along with 160,000 students in New York took the SAT. Of those students 21,000 hope to get a PhD like me, of which 4,000 plan to study Biological Sciences like me.
The test administrator started collecting the booklets, passing by the open windows that made her hair surrender to the wind coming in. As she arrived at my desk I handed her my booklet of bubbles and my booklet of questions and answers. The booklet of questions and answers will be reused for the next kid who comes to take the SATs, while the booklet of filled in bubbles is unique to me, it will tell my story of how well I played the test game and the admission counselors will know me.
As I handed her my booklets I smiled to her and she smiled back. I don't know what I tried to achieve through that smile, but I did it anyway. I said thanks and left.
On the street it was a usual Sunday morning. People walking around parks as trucks pass by. Deli's serving coffee and vendors setting up shop. People were round and about playing with and by the rules of everyday life. Heading home I replayed the test and all that happened. The bubbles, the Yeshiva memories, the girl, the boy humming behind me and the classroom.
They say a test is to tell you how well you know your stuff, and before I even got my score I knew. I knew that a mind is a tough thing to change. If I want to be a part of this world I will need to do some rewiring. I will need to learn how to play the game of systems and rules, where you always brake one to win the other.
I ended up receiving my combined score of 1840 which placed me in the 85th percentile nationwide. I applied to college and ended up enrolling later that year. I think I saw that girl who gave the test again on the street once, but I'm not sure. I don't think I ever saw the boy who sat behind me again since that Sunday, but that song he sang I heard a million times since then, sung by high school students as they walk down the street.
In a few months I would go on to take a placement test that will place me in the classes I need. Then a slue of tests will follow until in four years I will take the big test that will let me graduate. After that I will take a few other tests till I move on. And then I will write my own test. I will gather all the "depends" in front of me, each "depend" will be based on the knowledge of facts I have accumulated over years of test taking. After blowing and busting every bubble I will hopefully come along the final answer, whose idea will humble me into surrender. All the discussions will be behind and ahead of that moment. At that moment I will create an answer, and for that moment it will be a like what I envisioned when I read Kuhn. At that moment kids across the world will be bubbling in on their test sheets the bubble I blew out of all my speculations . At that moment my mind, that sat behind the frosted windows of Yeshivas and in front of the blackboards in classrooms, will be happy. At that moment I, who discussed Talmudic subjects with Roshei Yeshiva and bubbled in answers on test sheets, will be satisfied. And for that moment it will all have been worth it.
