(January 23, 2001) — Hey all freshmen. Yeah, you. Members of the Class of 2004. Listen up! You’ll have to take a test to graduate from high school. That’s right, a test! After all your hard work and hours spent keeping your grades up, worrying about the SATs or ACTs, performing the requirement of 100 hours of community service, stressing over where you want to go to college and their applications and the frantic search of finding the cash you need to get to that college, you still have to worry about D-Day—De Test Day. It doesn’t matter if you are an average student or a genius. It all comes down to one thing—the exit exam. If you pass you get your diploma…and if you don’t, you can kiss graduating good-bye. California lawmakers have made a high school exit exam for seniors to take in order to graduate in an attempt to raise their achievements. Students in the Class of 2004 will be the first class to have to pass the test to graduate. According to a recent article in the L.A. Times, independent studies have shown that on average, the 16,500 students who field tested the exam only answered correctly 44% of the math questions and 55% of the English questions. Now doesn’t that make you feel a whole lot better? Due to the large numbers of failures, Gov. Gray Davis has decided to make the test easier by taking out some questions. In order for students to pass the exam, students would have to be taught in all of the testing fields. They would have to be taught and be proficient in algebra, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, informational text, usage and mechanics and be able to write a powerful but short essay—by their sophomore year. Not all students have been taught this. So students will be taking tests about subjects they’ve never heard of before! Am I the only one who can foresee the failing marks? It doesn’t matter that the exit exam has been made shorter and easier and that the students can have several chances to pass the exam. It’s the principle of the matter. These big, significant tests make most people nervous and therefore most people do badly on them. Now, why would any student want to take another big test? Why do we even need to have an exit exam? Our grades and the classes that we took that are on our high school transcripts should be enough to prove that we actually learned something. If colleges don’t believe us for whatever reason, let the glowing teacher recommendations do the convincing for us. Don’t make us take a test to end all tests. These tests simply add yet another burden to our busy schedules and add just a bit more tension to our lives. With all of the things that we have to contend with, especially during our junior and senior years, we don’t exactly want to jump through one more hoop when we’ve been jumping through so many hoops throughout high school that we feel more like trained dogs rather than human beings.