Three Reasons to Love—OK, Like—the SAT (sponsored)

If you've been studying up for the SAT, you're probably familiar with what we like to call the Apex of Standardized Suckitude—when it's two o'clock in the morning, you've just finished your fifth cup of coffee, you've missed yet another epic outing with your friends in favor of studying, and you suddenly realize that you finally know the dictionary definition of “obsequious”... but you've completely forgotten your own last name.

“Holy cats!” you say to yourself, as you rub the cobwebs from your red-rimmed eyes. “This sucks!”

And to you we say: Yes. Yes, it does.

But while we sympathize beyond words with the endless suck of the SAT, we're also happy to tell you that there's a twisty little upside to the madness of vocab and variables. In fact, there are several! So before you bury your face in your hands and cry, consider one of these three reasons to like—nay, love—the ins and outs of standardized testing:

3. Martyrdom. Your sacrifices in the name of academic excellence are not going unnoticed—and once the test is over, you'll have  some serious leverage with your parents. Let's face it: when you've just missed homecoming, game six of the World Series, and your best friend's birthday in order to study, no request you make will seem too steep. So go on, champ, and ask for that pony. You deserve it.

2. Random knowledge retention. We're not going to lie; you will, eventually, forget 90 percent of what you've learned in order to ace the SAT. But that other ten percent? It's with you for life, and it'll be the most impressively random collection of vocab, grammar rules, and mathematical theories ever. And while you may not think this sounds so great now, just wait until your brain coughs up a piece of SAT-related ephemera just in time for you to tell that lovely young lady at frosh orientation that she's positively... callipygian. Score!

1. The trip, man. The Woodstock generation ingested illegal substances of dubious provenance just to achieve the same exhausted delirium that you're experiencing after seven straight hours of cramming for the critical reading section. You are testing the limits of your mind, and it's amaaazing. Remember this when you start hallucinating that your practice book has grown teeth and is speaking to you in Urdu. (If you start talking back to the book, it's time to go to bed.)

Do you love, or just like, anything about the SAT?