On Jan. 26, Students slowly filed into the main entrance of PHS, face masks on and six feet apart from each other. As they left the biting, 36-degree cold behind them, they prepared to face their next challenge: the PSAT. Although standardized testing has been a decades-long routine for most high schoolers, the PSAT had to undergo a lot of changes for the COVID era.

Junior Ellie Black said that to enter the building, a woman waved students through one at a time from two lines, to the left and right. Inside their testing rooms, test takers were socially distanced. She said there were no signs or other notifiers of public health protocols like mask-wearing and social distancing. Other than the obvious spreading out, the test felt normal.

“[Students] were spaced apart well, and everybody was wearing their masks, so it felt really safe,” junior Graham Mcweeny said.

If school continued in the same protocols and formatting, McWeeny said he thought it would feel great.

Teachers sat normally at the front of the classroom and everyone seemed comfortable and confident in their seats with the distance protocols and the science behind them, junior Micah Muller-Harley said. “We [were able to] fully concentrate on doing our best on the assessment.”

In the middle of the test, Black said the fire alarm went off, forcing all students and proctors to evacuate. Upon their return, the test continued as normal.

“Obviously, social distancing [during the evacuation] wasn’t perfect, although some teachers were trying to encourage social distancing as we walked down the stairs,” Black said.

On the other hand, Mueller-Harley said the evacuation to the park provided a looking glass into the former school feeling. Students got to interact with each other, find friends they haven’t talked to and were finally subject to semi-free movement, even for just a short time.

“The fire alarm was the best thing that ever happened regarding school since before coronavirus,” Mueller-Harley said.

What normally is a bleak day marked by months of preparation, the PSAT was actually fun, both McWeeny and Mueller-Harley said.