Exams ‘08, day seven

2006: one | two | three
2007: one | two | three | four | five
2008: one | two | three | four | five | six

At about ten to one, someone came by our testing room and asked Ms. N if any of her students had arrived yet.  “Oh yeah,” she replied, “both of them!”– gesturing to Elena and me (with Maddie due to arrive fashionably late following her Spanish test).

Yes, this was in fact the Latin regents.

It should not have been easier than the Latin 2 benchmark.  I had even learned my lesson and reviewed a little for this one, but I didn’t really need to, especially as we could choose just 20/30 culture questions to answer.  I could’ve done more than that, NYS Board of Regents!  Like that one about the obscure dude who burned his hand out of loyalty to Rome or something–

– Whose name I somehow remembered and laughed about when I encountered a question about him during the regents [a question I then skipped because there were better questions to answer (like about boats!)], and JUST NOW, whilst writing these very words, have forgotten.  Annoyingly.

I know about him only because I came across a question about him on one of the practice regents we got in class, so I very meticulously– too meticulously, really– looked through all of those.  Nothing!  Nothing about him!  What the hell?  How is this possible?  Did I just make this guy up out of thin air?

His praenomen was Marcus and his nomen began with the letters Scau-, which I know because I associated those letters with the idea of him burning his hand.  (You just peeked into the mind of genius, dude.  This is how we work.)  So I Wikipedia’d and Googled all sorts of creative things, including some plausible Roman-sounding names (Scaurenius?), and finally ended up at this List of ancient Romans.  Surely, surely this would be fruitful.  He had to be here.

Ladies and gentlemen.

Either I am insane, or we have found a topic so unspeakably obscure that not even Wikipedia has any information about it.  And before you say anything, I am going to make an executive decision and say it is the latter.

And as soon as I figure out this man’s goddamn name, I am writing a Wikipedia entry on him.  (Step four: profit!)

BUT THIS IS ALL A DIGRESSION.

One of those digressions that kind of turns into the entry itself.  Anyway, I was out of the testing room in about an hour, making this my shortest test of the year by a long shot.  I was pleased to discover that despite the hullabaloo of the stormclouds and winds and whatnot, it was not raining!  And actually kind of sunny and nice!  Which was a surprise mostly because I was about to walk Downtown and didn’t have an umbrella– which I guess proves that I’m not very divine after all.  Maybe just a little bit divine?

So that is the story of my last regents exam ever.  But of more immediate importance is the fact that it was my last exam of my sojourn as a junior.  This means I get to move on to that most exciting part of the year.  Cleaning out school stuff!  Sweating at graduation!  Reading and sunning on the deck!  Qualmlessly surfing the internet!

Oh, and looks like I’ll be heading to the Czech Republic sometime too.

Tags: digression, exams, Latin, Marcus Whatshisface, summer, weather