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Adios, Flash Cards I took the GRE this morning, after getting only four hours of sleep because I was frantically trying to memorize the definitions of words like recondite, sedulous, and obfuscate (good thing I remembered that one; it was on the test). Greg was a champion and quizzed me off and on all weekend on the damn things, and I really don't ever want to see another index card. Spending the weekend with index cards is certainly the way to avoid fixating on the fact that I wasn't at JournalCon. The essays were first, and they were pretty easy. I'm confident I did well. Then a quantitative section, which I amused myself by filling in B B B B B... The program I'm applying to could care less about my math ability - good thing, since I don't intend to write formulae about the Romantics. Then the verbal section, which was both a little harder than I'd hoped and a little easier than I'd suspected. I took my time, which was my biggest challenge on all the practice tests I took. I knew that slowing down was really important, because the earliest questions count the most. It sort of makes you feel like you're wasting your time after the first fifteen, but there you have it. After another session of B B B B B on more quantitative questions, I was done. I ended up scoring exactly what I'd scored on the final practice verbal test I took before going to sleep last night - 650. I was disappointed that my score didn't start with a seven until I looked at the paperwork they gave me and saw that since 600 is 87th percentile and 700 is 95th, I scored in the area of the 90th percentile. Well, that's just fine and dandy, and I think good enough for the program. So I'm quite pleased, and I appreciate all the eleventh-hour good luck email I got last night. So now I have the grades, the recommendations, the GRE score and the writing sample parts pretty well sewn up. The last two pieces? The personal statement, which I'm choking on, and the GRE Literature in English subject test, one of the most ridiculously hard tests ever designed. Even Harvard only wants a 600, apparently. And the head of the program I'm applying to told me We really just want students to go through the study process. Okay, that's pretty stupid if that's the main reason, but sure, I'll cram my head full of as much lit as I can stomach over the next month and see how I do. In other local news, I found out I need two crowns today. That sucks considerably since the out-of-pocket outlay is about $300 for each. Ouch. Hello, Christmas. Hopefully one can wait til January - neither seems urgent. If you were thinking about making a Crane For Jessie and you haven't yet, now's the time to get it done! I'll be sending them to her in a couple of weeks. If you want to make one and haven't, or have made one and haven't mailed it yet, please email me and let me know so I don't mail the big box without yours. I'm going to crawl into bed now and try to make up some sleep. I have to temp in the morning, and then I have my IndoPak lit seminar tomorrow night. I skipped ahead in the booklist and read The God of Small Things and didn't really like it. I'm now reading Cracking India by Bapsi Sidhwa, and that's better, and obviously won't get to the final novel (Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie - am I the only one that thinks of Bridget Jones vacuuming and saying Sal-MAN over and over) before tomorrow night. Tomorrow night I have to hand in prospective paper topics. I'm not feeling particularly attached to any of these books, but I have a tentative topic anyway - something to do with the cultural effect Britain's occupation of India had on the country, as reflected by the literature. We'll see if I can flesh that out by tomorrow. Wasn't I going to bed? |