Ring, ding, ding. There went that oh-so-familiar ringtone that signalized the start of every (hopefully) productive day. The sky was still dark outside, the roads quiet. As you went to hit the snooze button and hopefully get some more sleep in, a wave of realization hit. Oh. Today’s the day. Quickly, the feeling of dread and a bit of anxiety hit. This was it—the day you’ve been preparing for, or trying to at least, for the past few months. Just a few hours ago, you weren’t even sure if the exam was pushing through due to Typhoon Paeng, which had kindly decided to grace everyone with its presence. You reached for your phone just to see the lock screen greeting you with the date and time: October 29, 2022, 4:30 AM. That meant you had less than three hours until the deciding factor of your future will occur. No big deal.
It was funny to think that just two years before, your biggest problem was figuring out which Zoom link to join and worrying if you said anything incriminating when you were accidentally unmuted. But at that moment, you were about to take the Ateneo College Entrance Test, or the ACET for short: the first of many college entrance exams that you would be having to determine your future university, and possibly your future in its entirety. You have enrolled in some review classes and have been intensively studying (otherwise known as cramming) your entire high school life—or, let’s be honest, for the past two weeks. And eventually, Judgment Day, as you had aptly called the day of the ACET, arrived.
Right away, you went to take a shower to wake up your mind and wash away the groggy remnants of the short-lived sleep you just had. Your typical morning routine went by in a flash, the clock seeming to tick faster than it ever had before. Mentally making a double-triple-check of your bag, you made sure that you had everything you needed to get you through the day. “Test permit, pencils, ball pen, eraser, jacket, water, and watch,” you recited as you looked through the things you were required to bring to the testing site. Finally, you sat in the car, setting aside the uneasy feeling that you’d forgotten something, chalking it up to nerves, and choosing to focus on the bigger problem at hand: the test itself.
You texted your friends regarding the meetup location, notifying them that you were near. Upon meeting them, you all quickly headed to Katipunan, home of the infamous Ateneo campus. As you arrived at the campus, it was hard to miss the testing sites, especially with the long line of cars surrounding it. It wasn’t that long before you arrived at the testing site. 6 AM, your watch read. That meant you had one hour left before your test. As you arrived at the waiting hall, the sight of lines and lines of people sitting on the floor welcomed you. Arranging yourselves by room number and alphabetical order, the butterflies in your stomach seemed to fly into a full-blown storm. It felt as if someone was doing multiple cartwheels in your abdomen—clearly, not a very comforting feeling.
As if on cue, the time came to take the test. As everyone left the waiting hall for their respective rooms, your nerves only worsened. The orientation passed in the blink of an eye, and suddenly the room was quiet, except for the occasional pencil drop (mostly from you) and the sound of the Signal No. 3 typhoon waging war on the four walls you were caged in.
In what seemed like too little time and too many questions, the test was finally over. You went out into the hordes of people waiting for their fetchers as you joined your friends and celebrated overcoming your greatest hurdle (for now). The pit in your stomach seemed to vanish, and you felt free. You couldn’t wait to finally enjoy the rest of the year without any responsibility or problems to focus on, until the most awaited thing arrives: the results.
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