We’re All Being Tested
“We might as well begin in the middle,” Roblin Meeks writes on Medium. He’s talking, as least ostensibly, about his son’s experience applying for college, particularly taking the ACTs mid-pandemic. But Meeks’ story gets at the same knotty problem we’ve all been wrestling with throughout the past year: How do you plan in a world that is ever-changing?
Meeks writes:
After the July ACT fell through, we tried to recalibrate the schedule again, to find a way back to the familiar path. After nine months and counting of lockdown, no path of any sort has become clear. M still doesn’t know what he wants to study or do in college, or he does have some sense but is (understandably) unsure of whether a plausible future exists with him in it. He doesn’t know how to look for a college that’s a good fit when everything’s closed or how to determine which college will handle an apocalypse better than others. Frustrated by unknowns and all the time he has invested in test and college prep for ostensibly nothing, M said “I just don’t know how to be good in the world.”
