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Feb. 7th, 2007 10:13 pmHe's able to sit the exam itself in relative privacy, alone with the terminal; since he's not taking it as part of a class, the presence of a live proctor in addition to the usual surveillance is not considered necessary.
It takes most of two days, and by the evening of the first he's already exhausted and aching as though someone's taken a stick to him. (The automatic self-diagnosis, lactic acid buildup in underactive muscles combined with the aftereffects of caffeine, really doesn't help at all.) The skimmer his father sent is waiting for him outside the test center. He recognizes the hired driver, and as he sinks into the passenger seat and closes his eyes, has a moment of relief that it's the same one, that it's a face he recognizes, because he's just too tired to be paranoid right now.
Under the exhaustion, though -- and not very far under -- is a quiet exultation.
Because the exam so far is going as smoothly as the quietly purring skimmer under him. He's already through the hardest part.
(I can win this.)
The second day bears out his confidence, and when he steps out of the test center into a late afternoon drenched with sunlight, it's in a very close echo of an emotion he remembers very well: the kind of triumphant hilarity that leads people to do things like toast each other endlessly with sake and dare each other to do undignified and illegal things around the statue of Hippocrates in the MedAcad quad.
The results should be waved to him sometime in the next four hours. That's enough time for ... well, for any number of things, but what he's going to do with it is take a nap.
It takes most of two days, and by the evening of the first he's already exhausted and aching as though someone's taken a stick to him. (The automatic self-diagnosis, lactic acid buildup in underactive muscles combined with the aftereffects of caffeine, really doesn't help at all.) The skimmer his father sent is waiting for him outside the test center. He recognizes the hired driver, and as he sinks into the passenger seat and closes his eyes, has a moment of relief that it's the same one, that it's a face he recognizes, because he's just too tired to be paranoid right now.
Under the exhaustion, though -- and not very far under -- is a quiet exultation.
Because the exam so far is going as smoothly as the quietly purring skimmer under him. He's already through the hardest part.
(I can win this.)
The second day bears out his confidence, and when he steps out of the test center into a late afternoon drenched with sunlight, it's in a very close echo of an emotion he remembers very well: the kind of triumphant hilarity that leads people to do things like toast each other endlessly with sake and dare each other to do undignified and illegal things around the statue of Hippocrates in the MedAcad quad.
The results should be waved to him sometime in the next four hours. That's enough time for ... well, for any number of things, but what he's going to do with it is take a nap.
