BY LILY GOLDSTEIN

At MHS, students experience varying degrees of anxiety on a regular basis. Tests, presentations and performances may eat away at our nerves, but there is no more stressful activity than taking the New York State road test. In the lessons leading up to my road test, my driving instructor, Steve Madris, emphasized the role of adrenaline in these emotionally taxing examinations. He told tales of middle-aged women nervously driving with the car in reverse and of confident teenage boys cracking under the pressure and forgetting how to parallel park. As a late-blooming driver (I took my time getting my permit), I had seen countless friends return from road tests bitter and, at times, downright offended, positive that the test overseer had failed them on purpose.

I had been practicing half-heartedly for a while, but needless to say, on the day of my test I was scared. I tried my best to push the horror stories out of my mind. Did it work? Of course it didn’t. I did just about everything wrong: I signaled too early, and then too late, turned too wide and then too tight, drove too slowly, stopped short, and then, worst of all, I swung into the middle of the road on my parallel park. Luckily, it was early on a sunny August morning, and there were very few cars on the road, so I posed no immediate threat to myself or to my tester. I think he kind of pitied me, actually. Or he thought I just didn’t know how to drive. Either way, he sadly presented me with the results on a little white slip. On New York’s road test, you can lose 30 points and still pass. A whopping “70 points off” was printed on the bottom of my slip, and the car ride home was silent, except for Steve’s theories on the effects of adrenaline.

Sure, after my first test, I was disappointed, and pretty discouraged. It took me a while to get back behind the wheel, and even longer to schedule another road test. The day before my test, I received an outpouring of advice and “good luck” texts from my friends. Everyone knows the stress of a road test, especially a second one, and as a result, everyone is ready and willing to assuage each other’s anxieties. I had practiced for weeks, meticulously perfecting countless parallel parks and K-turns, and I felt ready. Of course, the adrenaline kicked in the moment the tester sat down in the passenger seat and my right leg started shaking uncontrollably. Not a great sign. I continued smoothly enough for the rest of the test, hesitating every so often, but I scraped by, getting only 30 points off! As I got out of the driver’s seat, the tester shook her head, muttering that she probably should have failed me. She didn’t though, and I’ve spent my past licensed month proving to myself (and to her) that she made the right decision.