I think I am allergic to high stakes testing

I hate STAR tests. Apparently I hate STAR testing so much they make me puke. Literally. I'm a drama queen who means business.

Puke in my classroom. In a bag. Behind the couch. I projectile vomit so hard that I feel a need to lie down on the tiles of my classroom floor. The same floor with 200 dirty disgusting shoes tromping all over it every day. The same floor that each evening is the Ballroom Dancehall of the Mice Stars, dragging their bums over it as they scamper to and fro, urinating and pooping as they go. The same floor that is so cool it's like heaven on my cheek between hurling and I cannot imagine a better surface for my face.

I hate STAR tests so much they make me, unable to contain myself, burst into a student boys' bathroom screaming, "I hope there are no boys here," because I cannot even make it up two floors to the faculty women's bathroom.

I hate STAR tests so much that I hurl steadily from 3:40pm - 9:45pm, with a break to have a student declare, "Er, you don't look so good. Maybe you should go home," as I lie down on a table in front of her doing make-up work and a colleague to say, "You really look like death. Are you sick?" as I clutch a wall on my way out, and another break to get myself home so I can spew all over my own house and lie on my shoe-free relatively clean floors.

I hate STAR tests so much that I end up at the ER with a suppository and a saline drip to hydrate me, all the while delusionally thinking I will be fine to work the next morning.

I hate STAR tests so much that I don't go to work the next day (the first day I have EVER called in sick to work for an actual illness, as opposed to needing a sub so I can take students on field trips or whatever. Seriously.)

Now, I hate the electric colors and teeth-grinding, sleep-depriving, manic-producing high fructose corn syrup booster of Gatorade almost as much as I hate STAR tests. But not as much as I hate that the substitute apparently left my room with youth in it and didn't return for a large portion of the day, leaving my poor, fabulous 17 year old intern to run everything, calling me every hour. So, in order from least to most, I hate Gatorade, flaky job-shirking substitutes, and STAR Testing.

That's how much I hate STAR testing.