So many kids, so many stories. Parents die, leaving kids devastated and unable to speak for days. Parents get deported, leaving kids despondent and hopeless. Children endure emotional, sexual, physical abuse. And more. The saddest story I ever heard was from the kid in my AP Lit class who had taken her senior year to accept invitations from education reform groups to speak around the country, which she did, without doing any of her homework. She waited until after grades were turned in at the end of the year to contest the "D" on her report card because it meant not going to UC Berkeley. She brought her mother with her, and her two sisters. After going around and around for a while with me and the principal, her mother said that her divorce had really affected this girl, and she had been fighting so hard all her life to get into Berkeley, and what did I have against her daughter? She deserved to go to Cal! They were all in tears. The principal found a way to change her 64% to a 70.01%, and off she went. This young woman full of potential and energy, learned from her mother and my boss, that excuses rule the day. She appears to think that "social justice" means fighting to get your way because the deck is stacked against you, instead of doing the right thing. This is sad. I know this isn't what you were after, and that this memory says more about me than it does about her. Many other kids I have counseled, who are getting through something life-changing, seem to understand that life is in session, there will always be challenges to rise above, and that focusing in the classroom is a great way to get one's mind off one's troubles, if the environment is supportive and the spirit is willing. According to the above context, choose the correct option to answer the following question. Question: Viewing social justice as "fighting to get your way" instead of doing the right thing means what, according to the narrator? Options: A. a great way to get one's mind off one's troubles B. not enough information C. something sad D. something life-changing
C

There's a story in my Tuscan family of nobility and forbidden love. It's set in Taranto, Puglia, on Italy's southern heel and involves my daughter's great-great-grandmother. The best known version is told by my husband Marco's uncle, Riccardo, who remembers it being told to him by his elderly Nonna Anna herself. Anna Michela Comasia Maria Calianno. Her long name was a sign of her family's noble status. She was born in Taranto, Puglia, in 1889, into a wealthy, well-educated Tarantine family of physicians, surgeons and landowners. One day, by chance, young Anna answered the door instead of the butler. There was Nicola Cardellicchio, the postman. He came from a poor family of bricklayers and wool spinners, raised by a single mother. "He was no adonis," noted Nonna Anna. Nicola was rather short and stocky, but she liked him immediately. She continued answering the door whenever the postman passed. When Anna's mother, Girolama, noticed her daughter's growing interest in the postman, she forbid her to see him again, threatening to disown her. So Anna did what any lovesick girl would do: she ran away, eloping with Nicola. The couple had nine children in Taranto Mario, Marco's grandfather was born in the middle of the First World War but times were very hard, and they moved north to Torino to look for work. Nonna Anna was perhaps not an instinctive cook. I wondered whether she ever had the possibility to learn how to cook. Her grandchildren, Angela (my mother in law) and Riccardo, remember her only ever making lesso (boiled meat) and these polpette, which became variously known in the family as "sugo di nonna Anna" and, oddly, "amatriciana" (which is actually a different recipe, a chilli-spiked sauce of fried guanciale and tomato to coat pasta). But these polpette plump meat balls, cooked slowly in tomato sauce, a very traditional dish from Puglia were passed down to Anna's daughter in law, Angela's Tuscan mother, Lina, who made them so often for her own family that she in turn taught her daughter in law,... According to the above context, choose the correct option to answer the following question. Question: Why did Anna continue answering the door? Options: A. not enough information B. Because Girolama threatened to disown her C. Because she married Nicola D. Because she liked Nicola
D

(Question)
November always dragged around the station, but today was one dead Sunday. Not one car pulled off the interstate all morning. Nothing hit the drive but a thin steady rain, puddling slow rainbows in the oil. Me and Harnie just tilted back our chairs against the cigarette rack, watched the monster movie, and waited for the game to start. The big flying turtle was about set to barbeque downtown Tokyo when the drive bell rang, and up sluiced a car so damn gorgeous it hurt to look at it. A '37 Buick Roadmaster it was, painted a red so rich it was nearly black, that straight eight engine whispering like a lover while teardrops of rain rolled down the chrome grill. Out climbed this tall fellow, dressed like God's grandpa done up for a wedding or a funeral. His skin was brown as a buckwheat cake, with creases deep as drainage ditches. Took a mighty long stretch of sweat and toil, love and birth and dying, to carve a face like that. He flexed his shoulders, then rolled his neck till it cracked. He pulled a pack of Camel straights from inside his vest and flipped one out. "Got a light?" His voice was deep and warm, half gravel, half honey. I tossed him a pack of matches through the open door; he caught it left-handed, then flipped it open, folded over a match, and struck it with his thumb. "This the town with the dead fiddler?" he said after a long drag on the smoke. "You might say so," I said, ignoring the look Harnie gave me. Nobody talked about her; I wondered how this fellow had even heard about her. "Ain't a fiddle, though. It's a cello, like in the symphony." The stranger shrugged. "Close enough." "She ain't d-dead, neither," Harnie said. "M-more sleeping, like." He puffed out a wreath of smoke. Then another. "Let's go wake her up," he said. "You best not try, mister," I said. "She been sleeping for thirty some year." According to the above context, choose the correct option to answer the following question. Question: How long had it been since a client arrived? Options: A. months B. hours C. years D. not enough information
(Answer)
C