GRtErrible

First off getting up at 6:30AM after a night full of horrible sleep sucks, especially when you don't have to get up for anything because it is your weekend.

Anyways, a week after I returned from France I had to take the GRE. I was thinking of grad school after law school (basically because I don't want to find a job) and needed to meet the application deadlines. So I am taking a test that tests one's knowledge of English, math, and writing ability after spending 4 months of ONLY speaking French and still being jet-lagged. Only good results could come from this.

It began with the writing portion, which I nailed. Now normally I am a decent writer, but this time was great because they were asking me to write on a topic I had just got done studying in France: models of communication. I thought those classes in France were a joke, and still think that, but it at least helped me there.

Then came this insane multiple choice of vocabulary words I had never even heard of before in my half-sleepy/half-French speaking state of mind to which I was supposed to find the synonym of....yeah like that was going to happen.

That section was followed by math, math that I had not studied since I was a 10th grader and sure has hell wasn't going to remember unless it was asking for the translation of a Descartien principle. Oddly enough had the math section been on either Calculus or Game Theory I think I would have done better (not being facetious here either I remember more Calculus and Game Theory than I do geometry or quadratic formulas).

So yesterday I got results back. It made me flashback to my ACT taking days (Midwest boy and from Iowa so had to take the ACT rather than the SAT). The first time I took the ACT I did poorly overall because I bombed the English section. I retook it. The second time I did poorly again, but this time I had nailed the English section but bombed the math section. A complete reversal of my previous time exactly...it was uncanny I had the same exact scores just flipflopped in the categories. Finally the third time I put those two together and nailed the test. The only problem was I had raised my score so much that it raised suspicion by the graders. Had my high school counselor not known me personally they would have had to investigate the test and possibly asked me to retake the stupid test again. Apparently a 5 point raise is pretty significant.

So my results for the GRE, which I actually found quite hysterical: verbal 60%...shitty, quantitative 49%....even more shitty. Now at this point I should say that the writing is graded out of a scale of 6 points and allows for half points to be given so 3, 3.5, 4, etc. What did I receive? A 6. Meaning I was in the 96%. So when I am tired and thinking in French I have no English vocabulary, no English reading comprehension, no math skills whatsoever, but can write a damn good essay.