Eulogy for the Regents

Most of us had our first experience with Regents in eighth grade. Oh Regents, how could we describe you? Perhaps as statewide tests, measuring the amount of knowledge we had soaked up in a year of school? Or rather, how much information we could stuff into our brains in a night with coffee and Barron’s prep books? Especially within Stuyvesant, Regents were a testament to our general superiority in the New York City education system, an opportunity to raise the GPA that would eventually get us into the top universities in the world and a chance to hide the 68 we got on our math final the previous semester.

As most of you know, our lord and savior Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on March 20, 2020, that Regents have been taken away from us this June. When this was brought to your attention, I’m sure that most of you remembered the lovely times you had while taking these tests. Remember when you were on question 24 of the Geometry Regents and then you realized your scantron said number 25, so you went back and saw that you had skipped bubble number three? Or do you remember when you had just finished your Chemistry Regents, but you realized you had gotten a short answer question wrong, so you sat in Whole Foods with a calculator and plugged in numbers to see if your average would get the half-point boost it needed to round up to a 90? The Regents have been our saving grace these past few years, and we’d all like to thank them, wherever they are. I’m sure they’re in a better place with well-behaved kids who treat them the way they deserve, proper wooden Ticonderoga pencils and all.

To the teachers and staff of Stuyvesant, I haven’t forgotten about you, just like how the Regents didn’t forget either. Remember Regents week? It was a perfect excuse to make students travel all the way to school, wait outside on the bridge in the freezing cold, and take tests worth 20 percent of their grades. Regents gave all of you a reason to drop tests, (though whether you did or did not depended on the person). For that, we are all eternally grateful.

An old friend who many of us met back in eighth grade is now yet another victim to the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the nation. But, you ask, how can we properly pay tribute to the Regents in the midst of a pandemic? First, we cannot consider them just another victim. They will always be with us. You will remember them when your test average of that one class remains the same, you make THAT post in the Buying and Selling Facebook group with all of your test prep books, and you realize that you missed out on your chance to take a fat nap in a classroom without a teacher deducting your classwork grade. 😞✌