For a lot of people, sanity resurfaced at about 3:00 p.m. Saturday afternoon. The LSAT, a monster of an exam, came and went — and left thousands behind exhausted yet soothed and suddenly unsure of what to do with the open pockets of time they now saw in their schedule.

It is ironic, then — or perhaps “fitting” is the more appropriate sentiment — that my nightmare began the next day. While a relieved population of USC students reveled in the completion of 60 percent of their law school application, I dreaded the start of two months that would culminate in my own momentous Saturday afternoon.

When I graduated high school, I promised myself one thing: no more standardized testing. I’m sure you did, too. Say it with me now: no more overpriced test prep books, no more long hours of fake scantrons and smudging ink, and absolutely no more sharpened No. 2 pencils that broke with every bubble. I swore — there was a pinky promise, a blood oath and maybe even a ring thrown in for good measure — I was done.

Two and a half years later, I am my own living, breathing Judas.

The PSAT was truly my first exposure to the idea that one test could determine what years and years of schooling said otherwise. I had friends with stellar GPAs who obtained average test scores while some of the slackers and pot addicts scored in the top percentiles in the nation. Then came the ACT (or, for those of you from either coast, the SAT) a year later — affirmation that yes, one test says more than eight years of perfecting an instrument or three years’ worth of daily attendance. Diligent? Passionate? They didn’t care — isn’t the world made easier when numbers are posted on our foreheads instead?

But two tests to get into college seems to be an easy break compared to the rest of the world. Yes, the occasional American private school demands an entrance exam or two, but this process is for the very few, a very narrow margin of the population of schoolchildren around the nation. I thought it was silly. I did my homework, raised my hand when needed and studied; this was proof enough, I told myself, that I was a well-behaved, perfect student. My parents agreed until I returned home one day with my first graded exam: 95 percent.

I skipped home, test waving in my hand with triumphant joy. My teacher had drawn a smiley face and included lots of exclamation points. Clearly, it said what a gold star could not — I had done fantastic and exceeded expectations. But when my father saw this test, he took one look and then, without a moment’s hesitation, demanded, “Where are the other five points?”

My immigrant parents were often baffled by the American school system. They would come home from work and see me drawing political cartoons and making collages with magazine clippings and thought I was lying if I said it was an assignment due the next day. Sure, they thought this behavior was appropriate for a 7-year-old child struggling to capture her inner self, but a 10th-grader finishing a project for her world history class?

My parents grew up in an environment when studying was the utmost priority. We say that academics takes precedence and it does to an extent, but we could never understand the stress and pressures that my parents experienced. Entrance exams defined one’s life. A test was required for certain elementary schools, for most middle schools and for all high schools and universities. A test was required for graduation from all of these levels of education. Studying for these exams began as a child, with the acquisition of reading and writing skills. It was imperative — it was absolutely necessary — to do one’s very best. Study three months in advance for the SAT? Try studying four years to take a high school entrance exam. To be a doctor was not a choice one made at 18 — it was made for you at 6.

While my parents shed hair from stress and impaired their vision by studying with dim florescent lighting for so many hours of the day, I cramped my neck making political cartoons and collages. We like to complain about midterms, finals and the nauseating beast known as the LSAT, but maybe we’re simply atoning for the multitudes of mindless English lit projects, Spanish body-part songs and PE square-dancing finals we dabbled in.

My cousin in Korea, who is currently a junior in college, once joked that the calluses on her fingers are finally fading after years and years of studying. I heard a girl complaining in my LSAT prep class that she has finally started to grow one on her third finger, right where a pencil rests. What happened to the idea that education was, at the end of the day, the avoidance of manual labor?

Tiffany Yang is a junior majoring in comparative literature. Her column, “Alphabet Soup,” runs Wednesdays.