In a few short weeks, Thursday, May 6, to be exact—you do realize that we’re already at the end of January, don’t you?—many of your students will sit in a locked and quiet room and take a three-hour exam (for which they will have paid $86). First they’ll read several selections—poems, short stories, passages from novels and plays they may or may not have ever heard of—and choose the “best” answers to approximately ten multiple-choice questions per selection.

Then, they’ll have to write three essays. At least one of those essays will introduce a topic of literary significance—Many characters in novels and plays are normal schlubs who find themselves facing extraordinary circumstances. The essay will invite the student to think about and write about that topic—Choose a novel or play in which a nebbish or a schmendrick must save the world and write an essay in which you …

Finally, the student will be offered a list of such novels and plays with a notification not unlike the following:

You may choose a work from the list below or another novel or play of comparable literary merit.

This raises the question of what, exactly, is “literary merit”? Of course we—I happily confess to being a retired AP Lit and Comp teacher—assume (hope?) that our students will be able to expound brilliantly on one of the plethora of novels and plays we studied in class. Certainly they should be able to find something to write about from everything they studied in high school!