The Happy Report

I am SOOOOOOO happy! I took the GRE today, and I PASSED!!!! Not only did I pass, but actually had a comfortable cushion beyond the minimum requirement to be able to get into my program. [The photo details all my study aids, which is what it took to get me through this ordeal.]

As I told Mom, this is proof that miracles still happen. I cried out to the Lord many times during the course of that test today (I even begged Him to move the mouse for me at one point). Even though I put in many hours and hours of studying during the last two months, it was so disappointing to have an almost entirely new set of vocabulary words to deal with on the actual exam. And if you don’t know what a word means, you are doomed to nothing but guesses. To me, the difficulty of the test felt much worse than the simulations I had had to practice on.

I would get to a particularly troublesome problem, and despair would wash over me afresh. So then I would just arbitrarily guess something because I just couldn’t stand to spend the time looking at it anymore. I literally felt like what I imagine a [losing] Las Vegas gambler must feel like, and by the time I ended the test, three hours after it started, I really had resigned myself to having flunked it. You are allowed to cancel the entire test prior to viewing your score, but if you go ahead and view it, you have to report it, no matter what it ended up being. The girl in charge had told me to go ahead and view it, and then if I didn’t like my score, I could choose to send the scores to a school in Alaska or somewhere like that. They’ll keep the scores six months and then toss them. I thought that was pretty clever. But when I saw my score, I was so pleasantly surprised, I felt like weeping!

I was dreading the essay part as much as anything, and that’s what they make you tackle first. Before time started and the topic came on screen, I bowed my head and asked my Lord to send me a topic about which I know a little bit of something. And would you believe it?? My assigned topic was on education, which had actually been the one I was hoping for! I was thrilled! And I finished it with time to spare.

Before beginning the exam, I was given a set of sound-blocking headphones that seal off your entire ear. I thought I might as well use them, and so I did for the first little while. They were so tight, however, that I began to get a headache after a while, and they had to come off. After I took them off, I became aware of another test-taker who was just hacking and hacking and hacking. Come on! This is August—not the season for coughs! And then it began to really bug me! So I eventually put the headphones back on, but I could still hear her hacking away.

I have to wait ten to fifteen days to get my essay score, but what a relief to not have to study any more (just in time for school to start on Monday)! The kinds of math things I have had to digest in the last two months have really depressed me, and I am so thankful that I have not been called to be a mathematician. While my scores really are nothing all that noteworthy, I am going to take them and run while the gettin’s good!

One thing I have decided, however, is that it is not necessary to be so ignorant and lazy about vocabulary. I have been amazed at how many words I am familiar with, and yet, I could not tell you what they mean if asked. When I come across them while reading something, I have habitually been just breezing right by them, content with the context of the sentence. But not anymore. For as Jeffrey used to say, “I will be good!” One thing that ended up really helping me was those Wind in the Willows tapes that we used to listen to as children…to the point of near-memorization. May God bless those Brits, and may God bless my mother for exposing me to them!

GRE Attitude

I didn’t have but a couple goals for this summer. They included:
1) Take one summer class.
2) Sew enough dresses to replenish my sad wardrobe.
3) Make enough money to replenish my sad bank account.
4) Study for and take the GRE.

Goal number one was accomplished by the end of May, leaving the next three months to complete the final three goals.

I spent most of the month of June both working and sewing continuously. In addition to my work for medical aid, I have been doing telephone support for several doctor’s offices for my friend Tom. He’s been converting his clients over to Medisoft software because of the new HIPAA NPI requirements. The old software is no longer capable of meeting the standards. I went through the conversion at the doc’s a couple years ago, and I like to think that I’ve become a power user of Medisoft. I still use Medisoft on a daily basis to maintain the demographic records of medical aid, and I have also used it to track our school’s benefit auction proceeds. So Tom and I worked out a mutually beneficial arrangement.

So anyway, since January, I have been helping out my ladies-in-need at several of these doctors’ offices. I get to train them how to use the software, and when they forget, I get to train them again. Little old ladies in doctor’s offices are the epitome of Resistance when it comes to change.

So July rolls around, and as my goal had been to take the GRE at the end of July, I decided I had better get cracking at it.

“What is the GRE?” Mom asked me. The GRE stands for Graduate Record Examination, and it is a test that one has to take prior to being accepted to graduate school. Since there are no other regular classes I can take this summer, what better time to take it than now?

So I pulled out my Kaplan GRE prep book about the beginning of July, and folks… let’s just say it has been a downhill journey from there. Forget making extra money—I have had to take off no less than ten days already just to study for this thing.

“Just what makes it so hard??” Mom asked after one of my periodic groan sessions. “You’re smart!!”

Well, let me just tell you. “Smart” has nothing whatsoever to do with succeeding on the GRE (unless you’re the PhD type). The GRE is nothing more than a series of traps set purposely to try to prove that you stink at logic. I am convinced that my evasion of all things Sudoku has finally caught up with me. I have never liked puzzles as I am terrible with logic. I very much dislike applied math problems, and the quantitative section (as they call it) is pretty much one applied math problem after another. It doesn’t matter that I was the top of the class in Algebra. No. They take Algebra, and they mess it all up.

For example, consider the following problem:

Jane must select three different items for each dinner she will serve. The items are to be chosen from among 5 different vegetarian and 4 different meat selections. If at least one of the selections must be vegetarian, how many different dinners could Jane create?

Now, IF I had all the time in the world to figure it out, I suppose I could come up with the approximate answer. However, on the GRE, you have less than two minutes to come up with the correct answer. AND you are not allowed to use a calculator.

So that is just one type of horrible problem. For those of you who are interested, this particular problem is called a combination problem and is solved by using the following formula: nCk = n!/k!(n-k)!

Make sense to you? Me neither.

So every day that I spend studying for this thing, I spend half the time being inundated with fresh feelings of hopelessness.

So I went to pick my puppy up at Mom’s after spending all day at the library and as usual, I had to share my groanings with her. It just makes me feel better. I told her how half of it has to do with geometry, and I have never had a formal geometry course.

“Get Dad to teach it to you,” she said. “He knows geometry.”

“Not this kind,” I said gloomily, to which he readily agreed.

“Get Martin to teach it to you,” Colton said from his spot on the floor. “He can teach anybody how to do anything.”

I had to chuckle at that, for I do believe this would have even Martin stumped. But he would sure enough be welcome to try.

The test is made up of three basic parts: quantitative {math}, verbal {reading comprehension and vocabulary}, and analytical writing.

So I thought the reading comprehension and vocabulary would at least be a little better than the math, but not so! If you don’t know what a word means {which inevitably, you won’t}, you’re doomed. It’s nothing but guess, guess, guess. So I have been memorizing word definitions like crazy. I thought I had a pretty good vocabulary to start with, but never have I seen so many words I don’t have the first clue about! Try “sententious” or “salubrious” on for size.

There are some fill-in-the-blank questions, which are the easiest ones, in my opinion, but then there are what they call word analogies. They look like this:

FLOOD: DILUVIAL::
A. punishment : criminal
B. bacteria : biological
C. verdict : judicial
D. light : candescent
E. heart : cardiac

Reading comprehension? Surely that must be a ride in the park, beings I was brought up in a home with no television, the result of which made books my best friend. Not so!!! The things they want you to read are HORRIBLE. I can read the entire passage and not comprehend a single word of it. The one I read today was on “elementary particles.” It addressed things such as gravitation, electromagnetism, leptons, and quarks. YIKES! And the next one on Greek philosophy was not much better.

And then the essays. Dear Lord! Luckily, the GRE people post the pool of possible essays online. But do they have to pick from a pool of 250?? There is absolutely no way to prepare for them all, and so you’re just as well off preparing for none of them and instead spend all your would-be prep time praying you’ll get a topic about which you know a little bit of something. Please Lord, no political science, no nuclear power plants… *sob*

In closing, I will quote the dear Kaplan book itself:

“Those who approach the GRE as an obstacle and who rail against the necessity of taking it usually don’t fare as well as those who see the GRE as an opportunity to show off the reading and reasoning skills that graduate schools are looking for. Those who look forward to doing battle with the GRE—or, at least, who enjoy the opportunity to distinguish themselves from the rest of the applicant pack—tend to score better than do those who resent or dread it.”

And then they kindly list a few steps to take “to make sure you develop the right GRE attitude.”

Am I doomed for failure or what??

I’m pretty sure I’ve got an attitude, and I am just as sure that it isn’t “the right one.”