Teen Time

Testing, Testing, Brilliant

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Testing, Testing, Brilliant

Wednesday: This is very exciting. I’ve been chosen to test products for XYZ Company. Imagine out of all the teenagers in the United States, they picked me as one of their sample group! I can’t wait to start. I wonder what it is I’ll be testing? I know they wouldn’t give us anything harmful, and the paper that my parents had to sign stated plainly that there would be no experimental drugs or foods involved. Thank goodness. I’m pretty cautious about the things I put in my mouth. I want my brain to last, you know.

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Okay. I’m sitting in the waiting room now, writing this. There are twenty of us, ten boys and ten girls. Two of the guys are kind of cute. I think that guy with red hair is looking at me. I smile when I catch his eyes, but he always looks away. I hope he comes over and talks to me, but I guess we’ll have lots of time for that. After all, we’re going to be together for a whole week!

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You’ll never guess what it is we’re testing! It’s a series of homework lessons. Each day the earphones are going to pipe music into our heads while we’re doing exercises on the computer. That’s supposed to make us learn. Sure beats working equations from a math book! The only thing is that the music is all classical. That’s not my favorite. I wish we could change the channel.

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Oh, I almost forgot to mention -- the guy with the red hair -- his name is Jason, and he’s really nice.

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Thursday: I can’t believe I volunteered for this. My brain is so full of mathematics, I could write the silly book. They made us take tests all afternoon. Where’s all the fun stuff they promised? I thought we were going to play games -- video games. These games are just for learning stuff. That doesn’t count. I wonder if I could quit. Only, Jason seems to like it. He said that he had trouble with quadratic equations before, and now he understands them. I never heard of a homework machine that works this well.

Today they’re pumping us full of geometry, but there’s no music this time. Instead this program uses some kind of chanting. The voices just keep mumbling stuff I can’t even hear. How is that going to help? Besides who needs to know parallel lines and polygons?

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Oh, I just have to add this. Jason asked me to the dance they’re having Friday night. Isn’t that awesome? It’s a good thing I packed my special blouse, the one with the glitter across the front that says, “Music Rocks.”

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Friday: Well, I flunked all the tests yesterday. They called me into the little room and talked to me about my Algebra. I still remembered it just fine. I can point my finger to the space where it’s lodged in my brain. It’s like a big, hard lump, glistening with all those formulas and gyrating numerals.

They didn’t seem in the least bit mad about my not learning the geometry. In fact one of the guys told me a riddle: What did the little acorn say when he grew up? Geometry. (I didn’t understand it at first. They had to say it really slowly. Gee, I’m a tree.)

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Saturday: I had planned to write everything down in my diary, but too much happened yesterday. First I had to listen to rock and roll. I think it was what they call “Oldies and Goodies” because I’d never heard of any of the groups. Then the lessons were history lessons. I don’t know what happened to the math. (Jason was really disappointed. He even learned that geometry stuff. He said he passed with a perfect paper.)

But, wait, much more important than the tests is what happened last night. It was so cool. There were disco lights and a live band. (No, I’d never heard of them, but they were OK) The best part is that Jason is such an incredible dancer. I mean, like, he is something else. Really cool!

Oh, darn. It’s time for more lessons. Bye.

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P.S. We had the best spaghetti for lunch. There was garlic bread, too. Jason and I did algebraic equations while we ate. It was so romantic.

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Sunday: Wow! How did it get to be Sunday already? Two of the kids left today. I don’t know what happened, but Jason and I were working on some polyhedrons when we saw them dragging their suitcases down the stairs. We yelled out some farewells in German and French since we picked up those languages yesterday afternoon. Today we’re going to work on Spanish and Italian. One of the kids said that we’ll do Japanese and Chinese Mandarin tomorrow. I can’t wait.

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Monday: It was jazz day. Chinese with the blues just doesn’t meld real well. Doesn’t anyone ever explain that kind of thing to these people? Oh, well. Korean is after lunch. I heard that we’ll be washing that down with Renaissance music.

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Tuesday: Plato and Aristotle entertained us for a while. Jason and I have been learning chess during the breaks. Checkmate.

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Wednesday: Today is it. We’ve been here one week. It’s such a shame that it’s almost over. I’m thinking about signing up for another week if my parents will let me. They said Russian and Hebrew are scheduled for tomorrow. I hope my folks will say yes. I want to fix the gap in my geometry, too.

Oh, can you believe that they tried to bribe us with another dance? Jason and I and all the others all laughed in their faces. We talked them into a chess tournament instead. We plan to challenge the IBM program. I think Jason will beat it, but I’m darn good, too. I calculated that there was a 98.9876 probability that I could win.

You want to know the funniest part? The product engineers met with us individually and tried to get us to answer more of their ridiculous survey questions. They are still trying to find out the effects of their education machines. We just told them exactly what they wanted to know. The only thing is we didn’t bother waiting for them to ask. Mental telepathy is so much more efficient; don’t you agree?

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