T’was my first attempt at the ACT, back in the December of 2016. Like most students taking the exam, I was nervous, scared and, of course, sleepy. It was a miracle that I didn’t totally fail the exam, especially after what happened in the middle of the test.
After entering the room and preparing my pencils, calculator and mind by quickly going through the water cycle as I do whenever I am stressed before an exam (don’t judge), I was officially ready to start the test.
During the first few minutes, everything was going smoothly. I was slaying the grammar section, placing commas left and right like a punctuation ninja, when all of a sudden, I heard it.
“Last Friday Night, yeah we danced on table tops, and we took too many shots, think we kissed but I forgot …”
Suddenly, Katy Perry’s world-famous song, T.G.I.F, was blasting in my ears while I was attempting to determine what was wrong in line 72 of one of the many ACT passages.
At first, I thought I was going crazy. The continuous thumping, followed by Perry’s voice, made it not only impossible to concentrate, but also impossible to stop tapping my foot. However, it was at this time when I noticed five other students beginning to tap their feet. We all looked up at each other, thinking, were we all crazy? Or even better: Telepathically connected?
Unfortunately, no.
Soon, the whole class looked up, and after a couple of minutes of blankly looking at each other, we all slowly and simultaneously stared at the test proctor. While we were trying to take a standardized test, our proctor was jamming out to “T.G.I.F” on his phone with his headphones plugged in, eyes closed, completely oblivious what was happening.
Thankfully, one brave soul decided to wake the proctor up and tell him that we could hear the song through his headphones. Embarrassed, the proctor turned off his phone, but the time that was lost was never returned.
It was quite an experience — I’m almost certain I would’ve done a little bit better if I could just get those five minutes back. On the bright side, at least I learned to never be afraid to alert my proctor about any issue during an exam. Thanks to my proctor, I also realized I needed to remove “T.G.I.F” from my Spotify playlist.