<p>Questions 7-19 are based on the following passage.</p>
<p>The passage below is from a 1991 autobiography that
focuses on an African American woman’s adolescent
experiences at a prestigious boarding school. The passage
describes one part of a meeting of parents, admissions
officers, and prospective students. The story the mother
recounts at this meeting took place in 1965.</p>
<pre><code> My mother began to tell a story about a science award
</code></pre>
<p>I had won in third grade. She started with the winning—
the long, white staircase in the auditorium, and how the
announcer called my name twice because we were way at
the back and it took me so long to get down those steps. 5</p>
<pre><code> Mama’s eyes glowed. She was a born raconteur, able
</code></pre>
<p>to increase the intensity of her own presence and fill the
room. She was also a woman who seldom found new audi-
ences for her anecdotes, so she made herself happy, she
insisted, with us children, her mother, her sisters, her 10
grandparents—an entire clan of storytellers competing for
a turn on the family stage. This time all eyes were on my
mother. Her body, brown and plump and smooth, was shot
through with energy. This time the story had a purpose.</p>
<pre><code> She told them how my science experiment almost did 15
</code></pre>
<p>not get considered in the citywide competition. My third-
grade teacher, angry that I’d forgotten to bring a large box
for displaying and storing the experiment, made me pack
it up to take home. (Our teacher had told us that the boxes
were needed to carry the experiments from our class to the 20
exhibition room, and she’d emphasized that she would not
be responsible for finding thirty boxes on the day of the
fair. Without a box, the experiment would have to go home.
Other kids, White kids, had forgotten boxes during the
week. They’d brought boxes the next day. I asked for the 25
same dispensation, but was denied. The next day was the
fair, she said. That was different.)</p>
<pre><code> I came out of school carrying the pieces of an experi-
</code></pre>
<p>ment my father had picked out for me from a textbook.
This was a simple buoyancy experiment where I weighed 30
each object in the air and then in water, to prove they
weighed less in water. I had with me the scale, a brick, a
piece of wood, a bucket, and a carefully lettered poster.</p>
<pre><code> Well, my mother marched me and my armload of
</code></pre>
<p>buoyant materials right back into school and caught the 35
teacher before she left. The box was the only problem?
Just the box? Nothing wrong with the experiment? An
excited eight year old had forgotten a lousy, stinking box
that you can get from the supermarket and for that, she
was out of the running? The teacher said I had to learn to 40
follow directions. My mother argued that I had followed
directions by doing the experiment by myself, which was
more than you could say for third graders who’d brought
dry-cell batteries that lit light bulbs and papier-m</p>