It was weird.

I was finally the big kid.

The realization was not as magical as I expected. I was sitting in my desk, in the back of the classroom I hadn’t touched since freshman year Civics, taking the SAT. The realization occurred when I dazed off during the oh-so-repetitive instructions instructing us that we are not able to discuss what was on the test and to remember to completely bubble the answer key. My eyes wandered to the in-your-face “SAT,” the “College Board” decal assisted by the acorn symbol. Everything I had been working on for the past ten years sat in front of me. The test that would influence my future.

After the test as I was driving home, a yellow school bus caught my eye. It was absent of students, but it immediately brought me back to being in elementary school. I remember being in second grade and listening to the teacher explain why we had a half day due to the big kids at the high school testing. I didn’t really understand much of what was going on except that I got school off, which I was extremely thankful for. High schoolers at the time seemed like a mystery. They were tall, beautiful, intelligent, and practically adults. I knew that they resided at a school that was incomprehensibly big.

The elementary school teachers simply explained the SAT/ACT was a test that collected all your knowledge since you’ve been a little kid up until an adult. As I pulled in the driveway to my home, I suddenly felt weird. I felt like I was in Alice in Wonderland. I felt uncertain and delusional after the SAT. I could not tell if I felt incredibly big, like how I imagined I’d be at this point, or incredibly small, like I did not have the credentials to have taken it.

The SAT has made me recollect on how far I have come as a student and as a person. I have worked so diligently to come to that point in time, with two pencils, a calculator, and an answer sheet in front of me. As I sat in my old freshman classroom with a packet of questions that could influence my future, I had that realization: I was the big kid. But how do I move forward with that newfound knowledge? I pat myself on the back, thank the people who have helped me come this far, and remind myself that that test did not define me. It is not what comes back on the test scores. Instead, it’s how much I have grown, from the little girl sitting in Ada Elementary to the big kid soon to be out of high school.