Heavier Things

The GREs are officially over. THANK THE GOOD LORD JESUS H CHRIST. I've never been that nervous about a test before. My future in grad school was largely dependent on the scores, which is a lot of pressure to be bearing down on me, and I normally put a lot of pressure on myself to do well. So the combination of those two factors was killer. I couldn't eat breakfast Friday morning, had a slice of toast for lunch, and couldn't eat dinner. Had a lot of trouble falling asleep that night, and couldn't eat breakfast on Saturday morning before the test. All nerves. At least I hadn't spent the night retching over the toilet again... heh... so anything other than that is a step up.

So the taxi comes to pick me up Sat morning, I had given myself an hour and 10 minutes to ensure that I'd get to the testing center on time. We're driving a long, I'm reviewing some notes, and the next thing I know a cop is dashing out in front of us in the middle of the street. He has a radar gun in his hand. Fuck. The cabbie was speeding, of course. So it takes about 20 minutes for him to write the ticket and send us back off on our way. heh. I was so close to losing it, but thankfully I had given myself that extra time.

The test itself was fairly tricky. Took me 3 1/2 hours. I'm very glad I prepared well, because I knew how to take certain shortcuts and could recognize some of the trick questions. The verbal was really hard, half the words in the antonyms and analogies were completely new to me.

Since the test is computerized, you actually get your verbal and quantitative results back immediately upon finishing. You get your score for the two essays in about 2-3 weeks. My scores pop up on the screen. Of course, I have no idea what they mean. I write them down and spend the whole cap ride home wondering if I did well or not. When I get home I googled GRE scores on the internet, and they give you all sorts of averages - depending on your field and such. Turns out I scored quite a bit above average! HOORA. Upon discovering this, a HUGE weight was lifted and I spent the next 20 minutes jumping up and down and squealing. heh. I've been ecstatic ever since.

Now I can really start getting ridiculously excited for Ireland. 3 DAYS. Whoo!!

Listening to: Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrison

posted by Joanna @ 10:29 PM