SAT LSE GRE KFC

I am surrounded by other people's acronymic aspirations. I've been helping this kid Jinhong prepare for his SSAT for admission to American private school. Then he asked me to edit his application essays. Then his sister, Doyen, a senior in high school, asked if I'd read over her Penn application. Now Jinhong is done with his SSATs but Doyeun is taking her just-one-S-ATs again so I'm back at the Kim's place three times a week demystifying multiple guess questions.

Antoine took the TOEFL three weeks ago, an exam which is shockingly difficult. My attempts to help him a bit with that mostly ended in embarassment when I, a native English speaker and American college graduate, got a couple questions wrong. In fact, I have spent a decent amount of time recently apologizing for shitty American test questions. For example, Following a lengthy and dull passage on microscopes, "The compound microscope is used most often ____" We narrowed it down to two plausible answers: A) for bacteriology, or D) by teachers. After pouring over the passage for far longer than the alloted time I eventually guessed (D). The TOEFL answer guide claims this phrase CLEARLY must be followed by the word "for," therefore, (A) is the right answer regardless of the contents of the passage. I emphatically object. I find nothing grammatically wrong with the statement "The compound microscope is used most often by teachers." You may disagree. In any case, I find this distinction so petty I can't believe they're testing foreigners on it.

Just when the TOEFL was over and done with Antoine realized he has to take the GMAT in about a month. So, we sat down to tackle some practice GMAT questions. Poor Antoine is unfamiliar with English mathematical jargon so I tried to help him by explaining things like "integer" and "prime number," admittedly no feat of genius, but still concepts I haven't thought about in oh, 5 years. Suffice it to say the GMAT writing section was arguably more petty than the TOEFL.

Then my friend Margot asks if I'll help her friend Anne with her application for the London School of Economics. Sure, why not. The following evening Anne shows up bearing the preposterous news that she speaks little to no English and thus would like me to translate her entire personal statement from French into English. In retrospect I should have refused outright being as this amounts to blatant lying and potentially injuring the chances of honest applicants. For some reason (I guess I liked the idea of being useful) I agreed to aid and abet her bullshit. I think I figured her chances of getting in were pretty nil anyways so why not be a nice guy. I gave her my name and email and asked her to send me the essay. The following day there was no essay in my inbox. I inquired as to the essay's whereabouts; she insisted she sent it. A brief investigation into her sent-mail revealed that Anne is not the sharpest tool in the shed. I had written my name and email on a scrap of paper like so:

ERIN- erin.silverstein@gmail.com.

She had sent the email to "erin-erin.silverstein@gmail.com." Seriously... She also managed to misread my cell number, (which she had written in her own handwriting,) lie on the app. about several things aside from her English ability, almost forget to pay the application fee, and so on. I am embarassed to have participated in such ineptitude.

The following evening I helped Antoine fill out a Bank of America summer internship app., all the while I have barely looked into what I'll be doing with myself this summer or next year...and forget about the GREs...

Mmm, I could go for some KFC.