PSAT, the fourth grade, the carpenter, and the goat, The

Journal of College Admission, Fall 2003 by Archbold, Michael

Tuesday, October 15 may not have been a special day for you, but for many of us high school counselors around the world it was "PSAT Day." This was my 19th year of giving the PSAT in six countries so this year should have been like falling off a log. As it turned out, it was more like falling out of the counseling business.

It all started the previous week, as I made final preparations to leave my office at the International Community School of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for the Association of International Schools in Africa (AISA) administrators' conference in South Africa. I would get back to Addis at 3 a.m. on Monday, October 14, so the last item to take care of before leaving for Johannesburg was to insure that arrangements were made for juniors to take the PSAT on Tuesday, October 15, knowing I would have no time on the Monday of my return.

The SAT was to be given on the Saturday of my absence and I put the SAT tests in my only locking file drawer. This meant I had to put the box containing the PSAT tests and material far under a wide table in a corner of my office. My final instruction to my secretary was to alphabetize and shelve all the new college catalogs and ensure my office door was locked at all other times.

After a good conference and and even greater shopping spree (my heart pumped with anxiety as I hit one of the largest shopping centers I have ever seen-I felt like Corner Pyle in the big city- Gaaalee!), the flight arrived back in Addis on time. I opened my front door at 4 a.m., was asleep by 5 a.m. and awoke-if you can call it that-at 6:30 a.m.

The day was a blur of emergencies and make-up work from a week of absence. As the sun was setting and the final got-to-do-it-now was done, I headed out the door. As a last thought, I reached far under my table to make sure the PSAT's to be given in the morning were in the box as I had left them. Nothing! Nothing at all! Just a bunch of air in an empty box! Panic on a tired brain! "Theft?" I wondered. Possibly, but we had nice kids, the office door was locked and the box was not easily accessible. Then it hit me. Those little fourth grade recycling trash collectors!

Our fourth graders are trained to save the world tree by tree and piece of discarded paper by piece of discarded paper. Every Friday afternoon these fresh-faced little bunnies hopped across our campus doing good deeds; collecting the excrement of paper those of us who over-copied, over-errored and overused threw out. This also salved our feelings that our weekly work lives were not a total waste of time. We could contribute reams of school-purchased, marred paper to the fourth grade who then donated it to one of the local charities who did something "good" with it. Lord God, we were all saved! I told those little buggers (er, I mean cuties) my recycling box was under my table and to please take the contents even if I was not in the office. As I looked further under my table I found the box labeled, "recycle" full of the 20 memo's that had been copied two-sided, upside-down. And the two pounds of "important information" from the recent Board of Governor's retreat, and 10 extra copies of admission applications from some unknown university, that began, "University is beginning an initiative to attract qualified international students, please distribute one of these applications to each of your seniors. (P.S. Students must guarantee they have $37,500 available for the first year of study and we have no financial assistance for international students)." I ran to the fourth grade room and found out that, indeed, the little do gooders had collected my "recyclables." I checked with my secretary and asked her why she had not kept my door locked. She said she kept the door locked except for a brief period Friday afternoon, when she was called to her office to take a phone call, but she had only been gone for a few minutes. I could visualize it; like a scene from a British slap-stick comedy, she walked out of my office just as the munchkins came up the stairs (probably singing, "It's a Small World"). They walked in, emptied the PSAT box into their little green box with the smiley faced tree on it, and left my office hand in hand to do another good deed just as my secretary returned.

So at 7 p.m., Monday evening, I went through six garbage barrels of recyclable everything. I highly recommend this activity to anyone who is thinking about doing GOOD by recycling. How the hell is a banana peel, or coffee grounds, or fluid of an unknown gray color going to help us save the Amazon forest? Those were just a few of the items in the eight "recycling" barrels. I know, because I dumped them all out on the fourth grade playground and fingered through all of it until the moon rose on the Old Airport Road section of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Africa, Earth, Milky Way, Universe. Twice, I went through this disgusting residue, but it was to no avail. The closest items I found were a set of Sliver Burdett math worksheets. For a fleeting moment I thought, "hey, who would know the difference, they've never seen the PSAT before." For a fleeting moment.