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My Day in Evanston

Today, I took the LSAT. I had originally signed up for the February test, which would have allowed me to (barely) squeak in applications for Fall 2008, assuming I did well. Unfortunately, in January I suffered a debilitating wrist injury as a result of comical stupidity. A note for readers looking for free medical advice: no matter how strong and manly your forearms and hands are, do not lived a narrow, 40-pound box of kitchen tiles with one hand. When you feel that strain and think, This wasn’t my best idea, just drop the box, pick it up with two hands, and carry it. By no means should you keep going, grinning through the pain. It will require you to wear a splint for six weeks and, if it happens to coincide with your dominant hand, may prevent masturbation.

I had the February test scheduled at Wheaton College, a stone’s throw from my house and a drive that I knew would not be a pain in the ass, especially on a Saturday. It was perfect — but it’s pretty difficult to spend six hours doing a multiple-choice and essay test when your dominant hand is fubar’ed. I was pissed and annoyed, but I had to reschedule for June. The June test was unavailable at Wheaton (either because they weren’t hosting it or because it was full), so I got stuck with Northwestern. It may be a classy university with a prestigious law school, but getting there is a pain in the fucking balls. My general disdain for the North Shore area is well-known if not well-documented, so let me say, for the first time on this blog: fuck the North Shore. Difficult to get to, full of assholes, and worse street parking than anywhere in the city proper. It’s so bad, it might as well be Lake County (okay, some of it is).

Provincialism aside, I mostly just hate traffic. It might not have been so horrible on a Saturday, but check the calendars, folks: today’s Monday. I could lament the fact that they scheduled the test at 12:30, meaning if they didn’t hustle (spoiler alert: they didn’t) the hour drive would quickly turn into two or more, but what’s the point? If they’d scheduled it at 8:30 on a Monday, I’d have to suffer the same traffic at a different time of day. Ten o’clock would have been the sweet spot — I could roll out at nine, clipping the tail-end of rush hour, and probably get to Evanston with time to spare, then get out around three and (hopefully) avoid the slow rush-hour build.

But no, it had to be 12:30. I left at 11 for fear of getting stuck in some kind of crazy lunchtime jam, but I managed to breeze into Evanston (barely) before noon. Still, it was good that I came early because parking was a bitch and a half. I thought the term was over — why were there so many people?! So I drove around for awhile until I found a nice street lined with permit-required parallel slots. I parked illegally for six hours and did not receive a ticket, perhaps my biggest accomplishment of the day.

So I walked over to the test building, in the School of Engineering, and found myself stuck in a line that wrapped around the corner. I sighed and queued up.

I’m usually a big fan of nervous small-talk while waiting in long, motionless lines, but nobody around me seemed particularly interested in talking. I guess they handle nerves differently, or perhaps the Appetite for Destruction T-shirt and the general “just-rolled-out-of-bed” aesthetic I’d cultivated made them decide I was too lowbrow to engage. Who knows?

Eventually, the line started to move. I finally got to the lecture hall, where they took my thumbprint (no, really) and ushered me to a left-handed desk. In retrospect, since I spent my entire college career with righty desks, taking the test lefty may have put me at a disadvantage. I still feel like I did pretty well (the test was a lot easier than I thought), but in terms of time management, I wasted too much trying to figure out ways to adjust to the backwards desk. Alas…

But getting seated is where things started to get interesting. I don’t know if it was my refreshing lack of college-related sportswear or the fact that I’m just unimaginably studly, but every woman I encountered either flirted with me or gave me googly eyes, starting with the assistant proctor who was seating people. I’d say she was just trying to be friendly or something, but why? To what end? And at what point does general friendliness trump actually doing the job? She got so distracted by my incisive wit and throbbing johnson that the group of people waiting to be seated started to stack up, and I was the one who had to tell her to keep going.

A few minutes later, a girl in a different section made direct eye contact at me. At first, her eyes were petrified saucers. I made some goofy faces at her, and suddenly she softened and was all giggly and weird. This is a girl I did not say a single word to the entire time, and you know, I get the vibe she was laughing with me, not at me.

All told, I got three phone numbers simply from taking a standardized test. Three. Did I miss my calling? When I was a lad, my dad always told me, “Bag yourself a rich one.” Even if I do poorly on the LSAT, I may consider signing up for every conceivable test until they ban me just because it’s the place to meet women who will potentially be rich at some point — or, at least, it’s the place to meet women who will potentially be rich at some point and who will also talk to me and hook me up with digits.

The test itself, as I said, seemed fairly easy. I don’t know, maybe it was the prep work, but the hardest part was the endurance. I tried to simulate the conditions of test day a week in advance, but I didn’t get it right — I didn’t realize I’d be waiting around for an hour for everyone to trickle in and get registered and seated, that it would take 45 minutes for a 15-minute break because they collected and redistributed all the test booklets, that it would take another 30 minutes to collect all the multiple-choice booklets and distribute the essay prompts, that the proctor would keep us for another 30 minutes because a few bad apples didn’t properly fill out their Scantron forms. In my home, I could not possibly simulate what felt like 40-degree windy weather or the harsh fluorescents. I couldn’t simulate the uncomfortable seating or the awkward lecture-hall desks.

I don’t think much of this affected me adversely. I brought a flannel for the “weather,” which was fortunate, but nonetheless by the fifth section I got a little logy from the combination soul-crushing fluorescent light and spending the three previous hours doing intense mental gymnastics. I still don’t feel like I did too badly on that section, but maybe I just wasn’t thinking straight.

I stepped back into my car at 6:10, exactly six hours after I’d originally left it. As I said, no ticket. The rush-hour traffic was surprisingly smooth once I got out of Evanston, until I got to fucking Des Plaines (apparently every one of that shithole’s roads are under construction). By the time I was cruising through the industrial park, it was empty. It reminded me of my college days, cruising home from Rosemont, using all my little shortcuts and tricks. Good times.

When I got home, I just crashed for an hour. It’s amazing how sitting around doing nothing for several hours can tire you out as much as (or more than) strenuous physical exercise. But hey, I got through it, and I lived to blog about it.

Next up: writing sample prompt comedy!

Posted by Stan on June 16, 2008 8:27 PM  | Permalink | School Rants | Digg It