BY CORI DIOQUINO
Editor’s Note: Our essay piece comes from APAC co-executive director Cori Dioquino, who utilizes her realization of test-taking methods as a metaphor for life itself, the maturation from prescriptive life guidance to full agency. It simultaneously explores and implodes the Asian stereotypes as test-takers and rigid learners, and invites the reader to consider a multitude of Asian identity, not just as a student, but as a way of navigating an unpredictable world where the answers aren’t clear, perhaps never even offered.
Header Image: Break Break Break by Kim Sandara | 18”x24” Gouache and Markers on Paper and Durlar, 2020
I’ve always hated taking tests. I hate their rigidity. I hate how they measure standards of excellence through a series of questions with predetermined answers. I hate how even a correct answer achieved in the wrong way inevitably costs you points. Most of all, I hate how there’s not a lot of room to think creatively. Lately however, I find myself thinking a lot about them. I’ve been thinking of the different types of tests I’ve had to take throughout my life, from the ones I was forced to take during my scholastic career to the ones I find myself taking daily now, well into my thirties, as I stumble through my #AdultLife.
Growing up, when it came to tests, regardless of the subject matter, I always felt as if every question was intended to purposefully trick me into giving an answer I knew was wrong. Multiple choice questions were the worst because no matter how long I studied or how well I knew the material, when it came down to test day every answer provided looked correct. When my friends in high school heard that multiple choice sections on tests made me sweat, they teased: “What? Those are the easiest! The answers are literally right there!”
And matching? That too. Do teachers actually believe they’re doing their students a favor by giving them sections in which every single possible right answer to all the questions are listed to one side in no particular order? After a while, I’d just blankly stare at my paper and give up, drawing random lines from one point to another and hoping that at least one was correct.
Each query was always phrased in a way that made any response look as though it could maybe, possibly be correct. And no matter what answer I selected, I always answered wrong.
“Damn it! I knew the answer was C and not B!” I’d exclaim to myself as I read my final, graded test days later.
***
Photos provided from personal collection of the author.
In my sophomore year of high school, my mother became so fed up with my terrible test scores in Geometry that she forced me to sit with a math tutor. After weeks of lessons, countless notecards, and question after question answered correctly, she finally asked me in an exasperated tone, “I don’t understand why you’re failing, Cori. You know the material! Walk me through what’s going on in your head when you’re sitting in the room taking your tests.”
I recounted my last Geometry test: I’m in the test room, test in front of me, a pencil in my hand; the minutes ticking by. I focus and use the strategies I’d learned to solve each equation. I look up at the clock.
Five minutes have passed, I’m still okay…
I answer two more questions. I look back up at the clock. Now, fifteen minutes have passed. I still have half an hour, I’m good…
Two more questions. One more glance at the clock. Oh no, twenty minutes have gone by, that’s practically half the class…I’m taking too long. I’m running out of time!
I look around me and watch as each of my classmates breeze through their tests and hand them in one after the other. I feel everyone staring at me and hear their non-existent judgement in my head, Geez, Cori! Why can’t you finish this test faster? It’s not that hard!
At that point I hear my parents’ voices in my brain, booming with intimidation: Ano, ba! What is taking so long? Why can’t you just answer the questions correctly? Why am I paying for your tutoring if you won’t pass your Geometry tests?
I think of my last piano lesson, sitting on the bench at the piano going over my last recital performance with Mrs. Bussing. My mother’s voice sounded off in the background, loud and exasperated, as usual: ‘Susmaryosep, why couldn’t you play that concerto once without mistakes? Why am I paying for your piano lessons if you’re just going to be lazy? Every other student practices and works hard. When I was your age, I didn’t even have a piano; I practiced my fingering on a wooden table! You’re so ungrateful!
I remember the last admonishment from my parents: Wala kang utang na luob! Every other Filipino child treats their parents with respect! They don’t talk to their parents the way you talk to us! They don’t act so American!
“Oh I see,” my tutor said knowingly. “You have test anxiety.”
I got a note allowing me to take my tests in the hallway. Immediately, my test scores went from low Ds to mid Bs.
***
My one saving grace in most tests was that there was one section I knew I could always excel in: Essay writing. Yes, the one section that everyone else dreaded, I loved.
I loved the freedom to write whatever answer I desired. I loved how my answers were my own opinions on a topic well-supported by facts. And I loved how I could take those facts and give a perspective that my teachers or administrators might not have expected. Sometimes, I rushed through all of the other portions that I knew I would fail just to get to this part - the part I knew I would ace. No matter how poorly I did on all the other sections, the Essay and Short Answers I gave would always ensure that I passed a test I would have otherwise tanked.
Photos provided from personal collection of the author.
As I graduated from one phase of life to another, the anxiety to answer questions correctly never faded, only the questions evolved. They became more complicated, convoluted. No more selecting which year marked the beginning of the Civil War or answering with equations that I could barely translate.
Now, I had to know the answers to elusive, “Adult Life” questions such as:
“What major do you wish to study in college? A, Nursing. B, Accounting. C, Education. Or D, None of the Above.”
“Where are you going to work once you graduate with your Bachelor’s? A, a leasing office. B, a box office. Or C, singing on a box in a New York City subway station begging for money and hoping to be ‘discovered’.”
Or, my favorite: “What are you going to do with a theatre performance degree and a minor in music? A, become a starving artist and a disappointment who consistently fails at life. B, go back to school and get your Master’s in something respectable to make your family proud for once. C, teach English abroad to get as far away from the country that never wanted you and settle in another country that also, more than likely, doesn’t want you there either. Or D, get married to a rich guy and become an exotic, stay-at-home trophy wife with three kids that you don’t really want.”
With each question comes that all-too-familiar panic, only instead of judgemental eyes from peers watching as I selected the wrong answers, I could feel my ancestors shaking their deceased heads:
Siyang - What a waste! Immigrated all the way to America only to become an unemployed theatre major!
Throughout every stage of test-taking in my life, the times I felt as if I’d failed the most were the moments in which I was choosing to respond to questions with pre-selected answers, ones that didn’t quite fit who I was or what I knew I wanted to be. And every time I focused on those answers, I felt as if I was running out of time.
Oh god, I’m twenty-four. I should be engaged or at least dating someone I can see myself spending the rest of my life with by now! Shit, I’m gonna be twenty-seven next week. Why am I not Equity yet? WTF… I’m almost thirty… why am I still single?! OMG, I’m officially in my thirties. I have done nothing of value in my life or for society. Absolutely nothing!
I got fed up.
I stopped looking for stable office jobs and started accepting jobs that actually brought me joy. I became a teaching artist, completed my certification in arts integration and booked work on shows like Daredevil and New Amsterdam. I started an organization with the hope of helping others who feel just as lost as I did growing up an immigrant stuck between cultures. Every test laid out before me, I began answering the way I wanted to rather than as others would have wanted me to. And even if I misstepped, I could feel at ease knowing that I did my best and not someone else’s best.
I’ve stopped looking at life as a series of multiple choice questions. I’ve realized that life is more like a series of essays. I don’t always give the right answers, but maybe that’s the point. Maybe the point isn’t to get the answers right or to finish by a certain time. Maybe the point is to do our best with the material we’ve been taught and the resources we’ve been given.
I excel the most when I ignore the pre-selected answers and freestyle with a response that’s true to who I am. I’m happiest when I stop caring about whether or not others see me as a disappointment or a failure. I’ve learned to stop comparing where I am in the test to where everyone else is. I’m not them; I’m allowed to take my time.
Now, I make sure that every response I have is exactly the answer I mean to give. No more checking boxes I don’t want to check. No more guessing which answer goes to which question. I don’t care anymore if it’s not what others expect of me. The answers to this life I’ve been given are now always exactly the ones that I know I deserve.
About the Author:
Cori Dioqino is a Filipino American actor and writer based in Baltimore and NYC, and co-founder and co-Executive Director of the Asian Pasifika Arts Collective. Her credits include Marvel/Netflix’s Daredevil, CBS’s FBI and New Amsterdam on NBC. She has an Associate’s degree in Music Performance from Howard Community College and a Bachelor’s in Theatre Studies from Towson University. Cori is also trained in improv and is an experienced devised and immersive theatre artist.
Images provided by author or used under creative commons license.
