So I made an interesting discovery about two days ago: one of my graduate school applications is due in just four weeks--an entire month earlier than I had planned. Eeep. I needed to rapidly come to terms with several highly stressful states of affairs, given that I really want to enroll in a master's degree program starting next fall. Unquestionably, the largest source of my newfound stress was the GRE (the "Graduate Record Examination" is pretty much the grad school equivalent of the SAT). After a frantic and barely-intelligible conversation with an outsourced exam scheduler in India, I discerned that the only way for me to take this exam in time for my deadline was to have it proctored to me in Portland, today. So I forked over the $160 registration fee, and came to Portland.
Let me just say now that I think the GRE is a manifestation of everything that is wrong with the educational system. In fact, I will claim that the GRE is evil. I hate that I have to take this test; I hate that the schools I am interested in require me to take it. But. My conviction that I can carve a path for myself studying The Questions That Matter made me swallow my pride and submit myself to the exam. I entered a room full of computers and artificial light, donned the yellow noise-canceling headphones, and clicked and typed my way through four hours of bullshit.
I bought The Princeton Review's Cracking the GRE to help me study for this test. The authors have a hilarious, sardonic take on standardized testing: "If you find yourself in the math section with a half a page full of calculations and no answer, you are in La La Land," the Princeton Review told me. It then gave me a neatly bullet-pointed list of tips on how to escape from La La Land. And, indeed, there was a moment today today when I was wandering a quagmire of calculations, and I was like, "Oh no! Caitlin! You are in La La Land!" I forgot the bullet-pointed list, and laughed out loud at the hilarity and hopelessness of La La Land. Then the test proctor came in and told me not to disrupt the testing studio. It was great.
But really, I survived. I actually finished the exam 45 minutes early, walked out of the Computer Lab of Exam Doom into an invigorating autumn downpour, and heaved a sigh of relief. Now I'm rocking gently on the train back to Eugene... Take that, Mr. Man--I can take your tests, and they do not daunt me. I may not get the best score in the world, and I may spend a portion of my life floating in different dimensions of La La Land, but I'm going to try with everything I've got to figure out this "Grad School" thing.
Let me just say now that I think the GRE is a manifestation of everything that is wrong with the educational system. In fact, I will claim that the GRE is evil. I hate that I have to take this test; I hate that the schools I am interested in require me to take it. But. My conviction that I can carve a path for myself studying The Questions That Matter made me swallow my pride and submit myself to the exam. I entered a room full of computers and artificial light, donned the yellow noise-canceling headphones, and clicked and typed my way through four hours of bullshit.
I bought The Princeton Review's Cracking the GRE to help me study for this test. The authors have a hilarious, sardonic take on standardized testing: "If you find yourself in the math section with a half a page full of calculations and no answer, you are in La La Land," the Princeton Review told me. It then gave me a neatly bullet-pointed list of tips on how to escape from La La Land. And, indeed, there was a moment today today when I was wandering a quagmire of calculations, and I was like, "Oh no! Caitlin! You are in La La Land!" I forgot the bullet-pointed list, and laughed out loud at the hilarity and hopelessness of La La Land. Then the test proctor came in and told me not to disrupt the testing studio. It was great.
But really, I survived. I actually finished the exam 45 minutes early, walked out of the Computer Lab of Exam Doom into an invigorating autumn downpour, and heaved a sigh of relief. Now I'm rocking gently on the train back to Eugene... Take that, Mr. Man--I can take your tests, and they do not daunt me. I may not get the best score in the world, and I may spend a portion of my life floating in different dimensions of La La Land, but I'm going to try with everything I've got to figure out this "Grad School" thing.
Good job. Grandma P
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