I had a job interview today in Watertown for a tutoring company. They specialize in SAT prep. I took a mock verbal and math SAT exam. I was thinking I’d do well on math and poorly on the verbal section. I surprised myself; I did great on the verbal part and I was clueless about much of the math! I don’t know how that happened.
The drive was an hour there and about two hours back. Watertown is horrible to drive in – it took me nearly an hour to go 2 miles coming home due to lights and traffic. I really don’t like cities. They’re disgusting. It seems like civilization keeps piling on top of itself due to lack of space, until even the ground below is filled with parking garages and subways. There are barely any plants around. Just the buildings make me feel claustrophobic. Houses are |—| this close together.
You don’t have to look too far to see human accomplishment that has rotted and decayed into delapidated buildings, bankrupt buisness, and weedy lots. It kind of makes me depressed. I think about death and dying in cities.
Advertisements make me mad. Everywhere you look it’s a brand name, sign, or bilboard. Look up, and there’s a huge sign on the side of a building. Look down, and you see car companies plastered in front of you. Look right, and there’s a gas station with smoking and lottery ads. I’m sensitive to this kind of thing because I notice it everywhere, especially in cities. I read once that the average person sees 1,000 or so ads per day. I can believe it. Even sitting here at my desk, without moving I can count 13 company names or logos. And my desk is not cluttered.
Finally, cities contain large amounts of people. I’m not very good at seeing the best in people. I see people everywhere who are stressed out, hurrying, frowning, and being rude. In cities, no one cares about their neighbor because there are just too many people everywhere. There’s a social experiment someone did where a person pretended to be in severe pain on the ground in the city. There were lots of people around, but no one stopped to help. I’m not sure why, but bad qualities seem to come out when people are together in large numbers.
12) In the last paragraph, the author is most likely expressing his…
A. Scornful attitude of humanity
B. Desire to assist people in pain
C. Frustration about rude passer-bys
D. Proposition to eliminate high population density
E. Need to stop blogging and get something to eat
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