I am not quite sure what to write about for this week’s column. Most of the week I have been consumed with studying for the SAT, which is this Saturday. 

If you are reading this as an underclassman, please take special note of what I have to say.

I did not study for the SAT at all until this month. I had not taken the SAT at all, in fact, until June of this year. I had no idea really of my baseline.

By the utter grace of God, my baseline was manageable, though I am still working to improve it. 

Every day, as I sit at the library from 6-9 p.m., I think about what might have been if I had only started preparing sooner. Maybe for the school-funded March SAT of last year, I would have attended, maybe I would have taken some practice tests, maybe I would have done something, anything, to begin the process. 

To be clear, I am not complaining. I am glad that despite my late start I am making it work. This is something that I do often, but I’m pretty sure that if this process hadn’t worked out so in the past, I would have better practices. 

I am an unbridled procrastinator. It’s not really laziness that makes me this way, though, as now that I’ve begun the process of studying I am relentless in it. What it is is that I’m a bit of a coward, and things I’d rather not think about I cast off until the very last minute, as if this ultimately saves some mental expense. 

Truth is, though, I expend much more energy with my last minute save-the-day efforts than I would if I had just spread the effort out, but doing that takes foresight.

Having, or using rather, foresight takes a willingness to be uncertain. Every movement and action is a mere calculation of what should be. We can very rarely estimate an outcome, regardless of the great lengths we might go to in order to calculate and ensure one. This is why some people, including myself, go about somewhat blindly. 

But a practical response to an impractical system still does not bode well, and the sooner you learn this the sooner you can start preparing for the future.