The Sussman Test

Ashlin sat in a bustling coffee shop, slumped over her papers. Other students weaved in and out of the shop, staring at her as they went. No other student from the University of Toronto understood why she would want to study in one of the busiest spots near campus on a Friday afternoon. For Ashlin, the rush around her matched the rush of her mind. She felt calm amid the chaos.

Her mind was racing again today. “If I take out an extra loan of $10,000… then I can afford this apartment… but then I won’t be eligible for the next bursary instalment…”. As her mind poured over numbers and finances, she heard a familiar voice.

“Studying for the econ midterm?” She knew it was Jeremy before she saw him, and turned around with a smile.

“No, the Sussman test next Monday,” she replied brightly. She was always happy to see Jeremy.

“Ahhhhh,” Jeremy let out a sign of agreement. “Me too actually”, he stated.

Jeremy was tall and lanky, with bad posture. He had dark, messy hair and acne. Ashlin never wanted to be friends with him when they first met. She knew students were competitive at her school and always kept her distance from everyone. Despite never considering Jeremy as a friend, it seemed that everywhere she went, he followed. At the first-year finance club meeting, Jeremy sat next to her. In her art history elective, he was the only other student she knew. Somewhere in the past three and a half years, Jeremy had become her friend. Jeremy excelled academically, and he was always giving Ashlin advice on courses and helping her with projects. In a school where people were vicious with rumours, test scores, and competition, he became the only person that she trusted.

“Good ol’ Sussman,” she replied, trying to keep the conversation short. Her mind was occupied and she grew anxious about how long he would stay and chat.

She wasn’t surprised that Jeremy was studying for the Sussman test. The Sussman test was an invitational test that allowed University of Toronto undergrad students to take a first-year law course at the law school while still in their final semester. If you were good enough to get invited to take the Sussman test, you were probably good enough to get into their law program. More importantly, if you placed first for the test, the school guaranteed you a spot for U of T’s law school the next year. A golden ticket to law school. Everyone wanted to be a Sussman scholar.

To her benefit, Jeremy seemed preoccupied himself. “Ok, text me if you want to go over practise questions over the weekend! I made a bunch!”, he said before waving at her and heading out.

“He made practise questions?”, she asked herself as he left. “Ughhhh”. Life was unfair. Students like Jeremy were free to focus on academics, live their lives and not worry about anything else. She went back to the numbers in her head, recalculating and reworking.

“What’s the point in writing this stupid test and wasting my time when I can’t even afford to go to law school?”

***

Years ago, when Ashlin first got accepted at U of T, she was excited to go to school in the heart of her favourite city, Toronto. She grew up going to the CNE every summer and going to Jay’s games. But her excitement didn’t last long.

“Ashlin,” her mother told her, “we’re going to need you to take the GO train to school. There’s no way we can afford for you to live there and pay that tuition”.

Ashlin knew her parents didn’t have the best jobs. They were immigrants and struggled in Canada. Her dad drove a taxi late at night, while her mom worked as a cleaner. A lot of times when she needed things, she would avoid asking because she knew how hard they worked to make ends meet.

When she was younger, her mom would take her to the offices she cleaned after the workday was done. Ashlin watched her mom struggle to explain herself in English. She saw her dad exhausted and tired from working long hours to barely get by. She always felt guilty.

The same guilt motivated Ashlin in school. She didn’t want the sacrifices of her parents to go to waste. Ashlin avoided a lot of things to maintain her grades - partying, petty drama, boyfriends, all of it. She knew what people thought of her, a stuck-up nerd who had no fun. In a lot of ways, it was true and she was fine with it. She knew other students didn’t stop to think about her parent’s struggles. She knew that they didn’t care about the sacrifices her parents made. So despite jealous peers, Ashlin felt good every time she aced a class or received praise from a professor.

She felt even better once she realized she had the grades for law school. However, Ashlin didn’t feel so good when she learned the costs of becoming a lawyer in Ontario. She became aware of the staggering costs when she attended a mixer for undergrads at the law school. Six hundred to write the Ontario bar exam, four thousand dollars in fees alone, plus another fee for the bar ceremony? Not to mention student debt upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars? She trembled at the thought of it.

She knew there was no point in taking the Sussman test if she couldn’t afford to attend. How embarrassing would it be if she was selected and then never enrolled? The only time in the history of the program where a student didn’t enroll after acing the test was when he got in a car crash three weeks before the fall semester started. Even a car accident wouldn’t save her.

***

Ashlin continued to pour over numbers in the coffee shop. She thought of Jeremy in envy and the freedom he had that allowed him to be so prepared. She had researched every scholarship the school offered, every way she would pay tuition, all costs she would need to fill. She still wouldn’t be able to afford it. It all seemed so futile.

The evening slowly crept up on her, and Ashlin knew it was time to get out of the cafe. She didn’t feel ready for the test. Her mind was racing but instead of thinking fast, her thoughts were a cloudy blur.

Ashlin packed up all of her items in a rush, eager to catch the next train home. She had to get to Union Station fast or else she would miss it.

***

Ashlin didn’t unpack her bag until the next morning. She pulled out her books, thinking that she should ditch the Sussman test and just focus on her economics midterm. While she pulled her papers out, she found a small black Moleskine notebook that didn’t belong to her.

“Yikes, hope this isn’t Jeremy’s”, she thought as she opened it. She opened the book and saw the name, “L. Goldstein” on the inside cover. The notebook was fresh and unused, except for some papers tucked inside.

“Ok, definitely not Jer’s”, she sighed with relief. She didn’t care much about this Goldstein guy. Moleskine notebooks were nice, but he probably wouldn’t miss an empty one too much. No point in hunting him down for a blank notebook.

She looked at the papers left inside. They were hypothetical scenarios, some legal questions, and answers. “Gosh, these look like the practise questions we were given for Sussman,” she thought.

“Should I text Jeremy about this? He said he was down to study this weekend,” she mused. It was clear that Goldstein was another student taking the test with them. “Let me just go over them myself, for now. See if they’re even decent,” she decided.

Ashlin studied the questions briefly and took notes on them. The scenarios in the questions were peppered with details and included slipping on a banana peel in the grocery store and falling, a contract that was written on a napkin, and even a question on murder. She decided not to bother Jeremy, given that the questions seemed way too intense to be on the test. It would just waste his time.

But something about the practise test inspired Ashlin. “Those questions were so wild but if that’s what law school tests are like, I want the challenge,” she thought to herself. “Maybe I should just go through with the test and see”.

***

A month after the Sussman test, Jeremy ran up to Ashlin from across U of T’s lawn. Jeremy always showed up where ever she was.

“Ashlin, CONGRATS,” he screamed across the lawn at her and then grabbed her in a bear hug.

“Jeremy, what the f-- ,” she said, pushing him away from her. Before she could finish, he screamed again.

“You were at the top of the score for the Sussman test!” he proclaimed. “You’re going to law school! Here!” His face was jubilant.

Ashlin felt the colour drain from her face. When she wrote the test a month ago, the questions seemed easy. Too easy. Almost as if she had read them before. Almost as if she had found them tucked inside a black Moleskin notebook that she accidentally took from the cafe.

“Jer, I don’t know,” she started to stutter.

“You don’t know? You don’t know what! You’re going to law school next semester!”

“I can’t. I barely knew what I was doing on that test. Plus, I don’t even think I can afford to attend law school,” she choked at the truth.

He looked at her with empathy. “Ash, you’re one of the smartest students on this campus. You have more drive than me. You think you don’t know what you were doing on that test, but clearly, you did. You aced it!” he decried, returning to his upbeat attitude.

“... I,” she croaked, “I... don’t think you realize…” she tried to explain to him.

“Plus, don’t even worry about money. Don’t you know? Sussman scholars are awarded a twenty thousand dollar scholarship,” he explained.

She felt her heart pounding with the realization. “Wait, for real? I didn’t even know,” she stated. “It’s not online anywhere!” If he was right, the scholarship would go a long way in putting the cost of law school in her reach.

Jeremy continued, “yeah, I knew because I asked a counsellor. I kinda need the money myself if I get in. By the way, for your class, make sure you take it with the prof Larry Goldstein! He’s the best first-year law prof, he writes the Sussman test too!”