Shankar Vedantam

What happens?

I'm wondering, at the point at which you got your SAT scores back, it seems almost as if this is deja vu.

You've taken another test, and the test is supposed to purportedly tell you something about your potential and how smart you are and which track you can go to, which college you can get into.

And very much like what happened when you were 8 and what happened when you were 11,

You were having a test that basically told you, Scott Barry Kaufman, you are not destined for this track.

You are destined for some other track.

To compensate for his weak score, but also to settle scores with standardized testing, Scott came up with a plan.

He decided to apply to the psychology program at Carnegie Mellon University and to focus his application essay on his pet peeve with standardized tests.

He argued that these tests did not reveal the true potential of students.

But Scott didn't give up.

He came up with a new idea.

What if he applied to another department at the same school?

Scott's voice teacher in high school thought he could become a professional opera singer.

Could he get into Carnegie Mellon via the opera program?

Scott's favorite song in high school was Stars from Les Miserables.

He sang it all the time, including at a performance in his senior year, a few months before his audition.

What is the grief?

¶¶ ¶¶

Scott mentally prepared himself for the path of an opera student.

By then, his second semester, he signed up for an intro to psychology course.