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!