Walking through the hall in the morning, the brain is trying to remember all those formulas, while the heart is beating so fast that you even feel it blowing up. It’s a test day in room 208, but fortunately Patty Bartell, a math teacher at FHN, knows what to do. She turns on her laptop right before her students come in and plays something that every student knows and has grown to love: the “Test Time Song.”

Bartell has been working at FHN for 33 years, since even before the actual school was built, but it was just ten years ago when she heard the “Test Time Song” for the first time.

“Mr. Besse came across it, and it was on a CD that you could order with a lot of other songs,” Bartell said. “So this is what I did, I purchased it.”

After falling in love with that song, Bartell has been playing it for a whole decade now. In fact, she has been playing it for so long, that it became a symbol in her room to the point where all the students know when it is test day.

“A lot of time students I don’t even know walk by my class and say ‘Oh, there’s a test today,’ just because they can hear the song,” Bartell said.

Unfortunately, this rhythm does not bring just a fun vibe. It can easily turn into a nightmare when students walk by the class and realize they forgot about the test.

“My worst experience was probably when I had a test and I didn’t study, and I came in second hour prepared to like do homework and talk to people,” junior Pre-Calculus student Ellen Davis said. “Then I heard that song, and I about had a panic attack, and I didn’t do to good on the test either. It was not a great day for me.”

For Bartell, this is just an opportunity to share what she loves in a fun way to ease the tension and make her students give their best on their tests.