Mike passed the stack of test papers over his back to me. I lifted one off the top, sniffed the blue mimeograph ink, then passed the rest behind me to Laylah. The teacher instructed us to begin. It started out easy enough; all I had to do was select the proper word, from two or three choices, to complete a sentence. I quickly answered several before I hit a roadblock. Suddenly, I couldn’t remember the difference between “want” and “went.”

My mind was going, “I know this; I studied this; why can’t I think of it?” Worst of all I thought, “I have to get this right.” I raised my hand and asked the teacher for help. She explained that she couldn’t help me because it was a test.

I looked at the two words again and again. The more I looked at them, the more confused I got. They began to look like the same word.

The teacher announced that we had just a few more minutes to finish the test, and I still hadn’t gotten past this one question. I realized that I wasn’t even going to be able to finish the test. I panicked, and began to cry. I was 6 years old, in first grade, and already I was a perfectionist.

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