I am an anxious tester. My chemistry teacher said that she never saw a student physically take out their stress on a page. With my clammy hands and shaking nerves, my piece of paper would curl and crinkle at the edges like it had survived some ordeal. Sometimes before an ominous test I would dream of an open textbook and me reviewing it in my sleep (something that perhaps deserved a trip to the family collection of Jungian books). The summer before junior year, standardized testing seemed like an impossible hurdle that I was convinced would defeat me. I had talked myself into a state of denial where I was sure that T-day (Test Day) would never come. If high school tests gave me nightmares, I was pretty sure that the ACT would put me into a coma.

As the reality of T-day got closer and closer, I began tutoring with Kaplan. My excellent Kaplan tutors (one for math and one for English) were full of the knowledge and skills that would get me through the test, but I needed to calm down enough to actually sit through the entire exam; I needed something like a powerful sedative. What I found was tea. The perfect cup of tea is a true art that needs a delicate balance between steeping time, temperature, and milk and sugar. My tutors would come to my house twice a week, and we would sit down, open the books and sip tea. I was like an athlete beefng up on protein shakes to improve physical activity. My tutors were confdent that I would succeed in the test, and as more Kaplan sessions and practice tests were fnished, I also began to believe that I could survive.

Eventually, T-day came, and after my morning cup of tea at 7 a.m., I went to my testing center and took the ACT. I did not hyperventilate, my heart continued to beat, the multiple-choice questions did not cause a brain aneurism, and at the end of the test the ambulance had not been called. I had gotten in shape and competitive for the ACTs and reached my target score, which was high enough for me to be accepted into Johns Hopkins University.