I just took the GREs. . .and boy is my brain tired!

Today, I took the GREs, or for the uninitiated, the Graduate Record Examination. It was a stressful situation for the most part, but I did well!

The testing center was only 5 minutes away on Livingston St. and I when you get there, its like you're arriving at jail. You're not allowed to bring ANYTHING in with you and the woman told me that if I wore my sweatshirt into the testing area I would not be allowed to take it off. You stuff everything into a tiny locker they give you and then you sit down in a hallway with chairs along one side. Someone calls your name and then they test you on information you entered when you register. I'm always afraid I'm going to be stupid and get this stuff wrong. But I didn't. Then they take you inside this room with lots of computers and the woman hits some buttons and starts the test for you. There are some tutorials that literally tell you how to use a mouse and type, which I gladly read so as to delay the test. After about 15 minutes of these tutorials, the test began.

The first section is the essay section, where you have to write two essays. The first is the easiest, where they give you a statement and you have to argue for it or against it. There are no wrong answers, as long as you support your thesis and write a clear essay. There are two topics and you can chose which one you want to do. I got two good choices. One had to do with customs and traditions defining a culture, and the other stated that students should focus on learning ideas, trends, and concepts rather than focusing on facts. I chose the latter and wrote a pretty fucking sweet essay. I had lots of time left over and edited it. I was feeling good.

In the second essay, you have to tear about some "memo" or "report," finding inconcistancies and bad assumptions. This essay was easier than I expected as the prompt was long and had all kinds of inane assumptions in it that I could criticize. I didn't have as much time at the end but I finished and I thought I had written another pretty damn good essay.

Then my break came. I decided to go to the bathroom even though it made me nervous, because I'm always worried I'll be late, or do something to disqualify myself, or some other stupid shit like that. However, nothing happened, and I sat down, restarted the test, and the verbal section came up. I was most nervous about this section as it is ubdoubtably the most important part for getting me into a good graduate program, and therefore my very future could depend on what answer I chose during those 30 minutes. The test started out well, until I got the the word GAINSAY and I had to give an antonym. I have had trouble defining exactly what "gainsay" means in the past, and in fact I had that flashcard on my desk to look up exactly what it meant. This morning I saw the card on my desk and I thought about looking it up. I didn't and then later decided I just wasn't going to do it and I swear to God I thought to myself "watch, I'm not going to look this up and its going to appear on the test." And it did. So, it through me for a loop a little bit. However, I remembered what it meant and I think I got it right. The test was getting harder and harder, which was a good sign, but I started convincing myself I was answering everything wrong after "gainsay" came up. Then there was this incredibly dense reading comprehension article about coral reefs and I got bogged down trying to understand it and I wasted a lot of time, so I began to panic. At one point I had minutes to answer 15 questions. Ah!! I'm fucked, I thought. I really fucked this up. I knew I would. I put my last answer in with 2 seconds to go, and felt defeated. Certainly not how I wanted to finish up my test.

Math was next, which I don't care too much about, but I still didn't want to look like an idiot. Wow, this one felt even worse as I was going through it. It seemed to be focusing on all the types of questions that Princeton review told me it wouldn't focus on and they were all hard! "I must be getting all of these wrong," I thought, so where are the easy questions?! It really felt like a blood bath, because some of the questions were so hard I had no idea how to even guess or ballpark an answer. There were strings of 2 or 3 questions that I literally just guessed at. And then I would think back to verbal and get distracted by that. I thought of my brother, who did poorly the first time he took the GREs, and then took a class for them, took the GREs again, and did worse. I was despairing. Lastly, they give you an experimental section that doesn't count. They tell you if you do well on it you have the possibility of earning $250. I was in a bad mood and thought I wouldn't take it, but the sectional was verbal and I thought I would try. Also, it was a nice tactic to avoid seeing my abysmal scores.

Finally, the moment of truth came. I knew I would have the options of canceling my scores, but if I did that I would never know what I got and everyone would know that I had canceled them, and I would be out $140. I ever so briefly considered canceling them, but knew it was stupid to do so. I bit the bullet and submitted my scores. Verbal: 680! Math 540! Now I know many of you may be aghast at such a low Math score, but that actually one of my better scores, and I really doubt if any of the journalism schools I apply to are going to reject me because I don't know what one third to the negative second power is. So that score is adequate. A 680 on Verbal is clutch and AMAZING considering I thought I had done so poorly. 690 was the best I ever did on a practice quiz and every other score was much lower than that. I keep thinking I read it incorrectly. I guess we'll see when I get the results in the mail. Sooooo happy to not have to stress about learning math anymore!! I already threw out my study book.