Stress flows through my body as I walk into the library after a long day of playing catch up for missing a day of advanced classes. I stayed up late studying to make sure that I knew everything that might be on the test.

Dropping my backpack on the wall lined with every other student’s backpack in the same position as me. Using the pen, I sign my name, grab my equipment to start my test and sit down at the table to begin. 

The first 15 minutes of the test go smoothly, until the rest of the teachers over the program arrive. Then, the test environment that the students who were in the classroom were able to have is gone.

Now a table erupts with conversations about fantasy football, students, the weekend and many other unneeded topics. All the material that I had studied leaves my head.

As I walk out of the library after struggling to focus and complete my test, I can tell you everything the teachers discussed. Shaking off the doubt, I pray that a passing grade appears where the words “ABS” once was. 

A few days later, I check the gradebook. A red 65 stares me right in the face. I stare back at it wondering what I did wrong, but this time it wasn’t me. I was given the short end of the stick. My classmates received an expected testing environment while I didn’t.

One phrase is commonly heard when any student misses an important test or quiz: “You can take it in the night library.” Night library, the after-school program for teachers to send make-up tests and quizzes to be completed, while a group of volunteer teachers oversee. 

With the word library in the title, you expect the environment to be quiet, or at least mimic the classroom setting during self-completed assessments. However, with my experience with night library, I believe that it’s the complete opposite.

It would be a whole different story if this was a one-time experience, but it has occurred over and over again. From now on, I believe that the environment of the night library should be changed, or tests should no longer have to be made up in the after-school program.

Shouldn’t everyone be allowed the same resources and conditions? As a “Leader In Me” campus, one of our habits is to “put first things first,” well let’s put the education of students over socializing.