12.Practice.Tests.for.the.SAT_2015-2016_1128p

240
Section 2
Practice Test Three
Questions 12-24 are based on the following passages.
Author 1 describes herself in relation to her friends in
high school. In Passage 2, a different narrator describes
the behavior of her college roommate Jessie.
Passage I
It was puzzling to me that my one real advantage
was the agent of my "uncoolness," and yet
at the time I was cowed into believing that it was
Line perfectly just. I adored my friends; they were
(5) smart, funny, beautiful, counterculture, and-as a
rule-utterly depressed. As the "happy" one, I was
the butt of most of the jokes. They had devised a
ranking system among themselves that meant that
the more emotionally fragile one was, the higher
(10) one rose on the totem pole. I asserted my independence
from them by valuing mental stability
and laughing cheerfully, yet I secretly, desperately
wanted something to be wrong with me so that
they would see me with new eyes. I would be deep.
(15) I would be twisted. I would turn out to have been
the most wounded one of all, but so stoic about it
that no one would know until years later.
Unfortunately for my social aspirations, I had
had a happy childhood, surrounded by the com-
(20) forts of the upper middle class and two loving
parents, the only set of parents among my friends
who were not divorced or separated. I had grown
up a sensible child; my parents were fairly permissive,
and I repaid their trust by taking few risks.
(25) I would drift into other parts of the store while
my friends shoplifted, or turn the other way while
they gave themselves tiny homemade tattoos
with ink and a sewing needle, but never did I condemn
them or tattle; I accepted what they
(30) did, and in turn, they accepted my presence
among them.
It wasn't until years after high school, traveling
with another friend who had had a good bit
of horror in her life already, that I was impressed
(35) by the folly of my thinking. I expressed to her,
after hearing her litany of misfortune and truly
awful circumstance, my strange desire to have had
something terrible happen to me so that I could
be more complicated. She flew into a rage. How
( 40) could I treat her misfortune so lightly as to express
even a hint of longing for it? I finally realized
that the only way to show true respect for the terrible
things that happen to other people was to
be deeply grateful for, not dismissive of, my own
( 45) good fortune.
Passage 2
Jessie could never get very far into a conversation
with somebody new before she would blurt
out some reference to the lithium pills she was
taking or the manic phase she had just been
(50) through. Her battle with bipolar disorder was
simultaneously the thing she was most proud of
and the thing she was most ashamed of; she would
tell people about it, I think, partly to show off and
partly to get the worst over with. She could never
(55) bring herself to say something as straightforward
as "Just so you know, I'm manic depressive;' but it
was always something like "Oops! I forgot to take
my pill today-better take care of that;' followed
immediately by a calculatedly embarrassed side-
( 60) ways glance that both invited inquiry and made
one feel inexpressibly awkward.
And yet I couldn't help but like her. She feigned
being a wide-eyed blank slate; she would go up to
our professors after class and ask "dumb" question
( 65) after "dumb" question, each one betraying a sharp
insight into the topic and a weirdly sophisticated
analysis of what was going on. She was always the
first to ask the chemistry professor a question he
couldn't answer. She played her intellect the same
(70) way she played her disorder; she would pretend to
be trying to hide it, all the while proudly displaying
it, framed in carefully constructed "accidental"
scenarios. I forgave her each time; her transparent
manipulation was so clearly a product of a true
(75) discomfort with who she really was that I could
not feel inferior around her.
In this way, Jessie surrounded herself with a coterie
of exceptional misfits. We were all going about
the process of learning how to be adults in radically
(80) different ways from those of our peers; that was
the thing that held our odd group together, and
Jessie was at the center of it, flattering us with her
insecurity.
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