With finals and the June round of standardized testing ahead of us and APs in the recent past, tests are on almost everyone’s mind. And when high-schoolers talk about tests, they like to complain.

There are few areas of life that, as a high school student, are more universally stress-inducing, blood pressure-elevating and heart-palpitating than test taking. Coffee is guzzled, sleep lost, anxious end-of-semester percentages calculated and pencils furiously ground down to useless nubs. For some tests—the big ones—the college entrance capital-T Tests—some parents shell out pretty sizable sums of money to ensure that one of those special Saturday mornings sees their child filling in hundreds of little circles like, well, like he or she just took an expensive course on how to effectively do so.

Later, scores are released and people murmur about who got a 36 or who wrecked the curve or who eked out that coveted 89.5 percent. People snicker about that one classmate who always falls conveniently ill for about 90 minutes on the day of the exam. There’s talk about “That Kid” from, like, three years ago who snapped a photo of the final, only to turn himself in after acing the test because he was so, like, wracked with guilt.

And then there’s always someone with something bitter to say about a classmate who gets extra time to complete his or her test.

It is understandable, given the bizarre combination of anxiety and mythos that surround all tests in a competitive place like Glenbrook North, that anyone with a perceived “advantage” might be scrutinized. But bemoaning the accommodations that certain peers get is both ignorant and potentially hurtful.

Chapter tests and final exams have to be designed to be given to the greatest number of students possible, and standardized tests are just that—“standardized” to suit the testing majority. When a test-taker’s brain is cognitively different enough from that of the average student, it’s only fair that some accommodations be made.

It is not an advantage. It is a necessity, something essential to ensuring that a given test serves its intended purpose as effectively as possible.

Common, too, is the accusation that certain students don’t really need the extended time or other accommodations they might receive. Faking it to get a leg up, the collective judgment might be. He’s gaming the system. Her pushy mom bought her time and a half.

Yes, GBN and the world of standardized testing have systems in place for determining who can request extended time on an exam. And, yes, any time there is a system, there are likely to be some people who find ways to beat it for personal gain. But this is almost certainly a slim minority of all people who receive extra time or other special accommodations.

The fact that someone’s disability is not immediately obvious to you from the outside doesn’t negate its existence. Our tendency to so quickly jump to the cynical conclusion that those who get extra time are doing so unnecessarily is far more telling about the competitive nature of the system that shapes us than it is about any individuals within it.