ACCUPLACER Practice Test 1

Learning to Wait

¹Read the following early draft of an essay and then choose the best answer to the question or the best completion of the statement.

²(1) The summer I turned seventeen, I took a job at my uncle's bakery, where the workday began at four o'clock in the morning. (2) I had pictured baking as calm, almost sleepy work, the kind of job a person could do while half awake and humming along to the radio. (3) Instead, the kitchen rang with the whir of mixers, the hiss of the steam ovens, and the clatter of metal trays. (4) My uncle moved from oven to counter without a wasted step, and he expected me to keep up.

³(5) For the first two weeks, I was mostly in the way, a tall, nervous teenager standing in front of whatever my uncle needed next. (6) I burned a tray of rolls, dropped a bowl of eggs, and once forgot to set the timer on twelve loaves of rye. (7) My uncle a patient man, rarely raised his voice. (8) He would simply hand me a broom or a clean apron and point to the next task. (9) One morning he showed me how to tell whether dough had risen enough by pressing a fingertip into it and watching how slowly the dent filled back in. (10) "If it springs back fast, it needs more time," he said, and he left me alone with the bowl.

⁴(11) By August, I could shape a braided loaf in under a minute, my uncle began leaving me in charge of the ovens while he worked the front counter. (12) I still made mistakes, of course, but I no longer panicked when they happened, and I could usually fix them before anyone noticed. (13) What I took away from that summer, however, was not a set of recipes. (14) It was the discovery that skill is built slowly, out of patience, one ruined tray at a time. (15) Even now, whenever I struggle to learn something new, I memorize the slow return of that fingertip dent and remind myself to wait.