I Slept Through The ACT & It’s OK

Don’t you love the word “dreamy”? It makes me think of clouds. I love clouds!

The story I’m going to share with you today is about a different kind of dreamy. It’s the kind where you actually fall asleep in the middle of important and possibly stressful events. I have so many stories like this. They should embarrass me but they just don’t. Here’s one:

I was taking the ACT my junior year of high school. I got to the science section and had that sinking feeling of certain failure, that is always accompanied by a mental fog rolling in. Imagine real fog, because it seriously feels like that. Like a dry ice machine has started blowing white smoke into the edges of my mind. Along with this came the horrible realization that I was absolutely for sure going to fall asleep. Panic! I can’t fall asleep! This is the ACT! The next thing I knew a bell rang and a woman announced that we had five or ten minutes left till the end of the science section. I had to guess ALL the answers because there was no time to read the questions. I did okay on the ACT. Not a great score, because after all I was asleep. But it should have been so much worse!

This story sums up a pattern that runs through much of my life. Not just the falling asleep during important events (though that is also a pattern) but also making fairly big mistakes that could keep me from getting from point A to point B, but somehow getting there anyway.

Hopefully this is encouraging to parents out there who are looking at their kids and thinking, “I don’t see how this kid is going to get anywhere in life.” Don’t worry. Somehow, mysteriously—maybe even miraculously—they will get where they’re meant to be. Even if they sleep through their standardized test.

~ Amy