Some writers excel at setting aside time to write and then filling that time with everything else but writing. I should know. It’s part of my special skill set. So here I’ll document what I do when I should be writing by–you guessed it–writing about those things.

Am I tricking myself into doing what I should be doing? Absolutely.

Am I baking and cooking with a theme now instead of just baking and cooking? I am for this site.

Necessary context for the folly that follows: I tutor.

Bison steak: Angle B, sides a and c

College Board launched its new SAT this month. So, in honor of the old exam, I threw a Goodbye old SAT dinner.

The courses represented sections of the old test and ended, of course, with a dreaded but delicious score report.

I’ll post the writing and reading themed dishes in subsequent pieces. Pictured below is the math dish: bison steaks cut into right triangles (technically a right triangular prism–I wouldn’t have much tutor cred if I didn’t call it what it was).

Also, I made three sauces.

Triangular prism bison steak with a). wine reduction sauce b). red pepper salsa c). chimichurri sauce

No standardized test is complete without a score report–our ahem just desserts. So I served fruit tarts and cut out a quarter.

The missing pieces represent the quarter-point deductions for which the old test was notorious. If you missed a question on the former SAT, not only did you not get the point, you lost an extra quarter of a point for your incorrectness.

Harsh? Maybe. But figuring out a strategy that exploited this disadvantage was part of learning how to take the test.

Fruit tart score report with quarter point deduction

As for the dinner party, the deductions made it possible for us to learn our fates and eat our feelings at the same time. Don’t worry. There were multiple tarts for each guest. No one went home hungry or, worse, hangry.

But in more ways than one, the transition away from the old SAT marks the end of an era. This year I leave my job to start something new. And though I am no fan of standardized testing, I will miss that old test and its standards.