What the GRE taught me about myself

While I am apparently an effective writer, it seems that I have no clue as to the meanings of obscure, multi-syllabic words...especially when you toss them at me with no context.

I mean, really, if I jumped out at you and yelled "SESQUIPEDALIAN," would you embrace me and say "Yes, I understand!" or would you grimace and wait for more? Now add the expectation that you're supposed to derive the opposite of my outburst and you'll know the state of confusion that I just had to endure for two and a half hours.

Fortunately, I consider math to be one of my skills - even paper & pencil math. After nearly a decade without using the Pythagorean theorem, circle geometry or the quadratic formula, I still managed to rock the quantitative section...that is, until half way through when I realized that I only had 10 minutes left! The state of panic that enveloped my body is unexplainable in the confines of a blog. It really requires beat poetry or interpretive dance. It goes without saying that the last half of that section was completed with considerably less care than I had used leading up to that point. So much so, that the last five questions had to be done in thirty seconds, which barely gave me time to click through to the next page and select a circle at random. Boy was I relieved to see that my math score was still higher than my verbal.

Poor, poor verbal. As if the first time through wasn't bad enough, I was randomly selected to do *another* verbal section, to test questions for future testing versions. This was another 30 minutes of taunting that will either be incorporated into your score - or not - but they won't tell you which. The entire time, all I could think was "Holy crap, I just threw away the last 5 math questions. They're gonna send me back to high school."

After the damage was done, I drug my defeated ass back to Deschutes. After talking to Star, I was relieved to find out that my scores will still qualify me to join the department. So now, I'm tormented. I don't have to retake the GRE for any logical purpose, but if I don't I'll have to live with this score for the rest of my life! I only have one thing to say "PHILOPHRONEA!"