Day 428 - "I Need Motivation"

So, I've been studying for the GRE.

Here's the shocking word in that previous sentence: studying.

You see, I graduated ninth out of 115 in my high school class and never studied for tests or quizzes.  In college, I graduated with a 3.45 GPA and the thought of studying for exams was unheard of.  Granted, for a while I forgot what it was even like to take an exam because I didn't have them.  Thank you, Food and Culture class, for reminding me what an exam is.

Back to the GRE.  Everyone I know who is/will be taking the GRE has been studying their butts off, and I was the one who waited to even register for the test.  The day after I registered, I went out and bought the review book published by The Princeton Review.  I planned on reading it, doing the practice problems, taking the online tests, and generally forcing my non-studying self to study for a test that I paid $160 to take.

Here's what I've learned thus far:

1.  The GRE is not a test of an individual's intelligence.  It is a test of how well you can take a standardized test.  (In that case, well, this could get interesting...)
2.  This test is going to be the longest test I have taken in my life, beating out the cumulative amount of time spent on my 5 attempts to get my driver's license.  Don't judge me!
3.  I've learned how to do analogies (which I knew from the PSAT,) antonyms, and sentence completions (aka fill in the blank or blanks.)  Actually, the book basically told me how to guess intelligently, since the test is timed and wrong answers do count against you.
4.  I paid $160 for the priviledge of being a guinea pig for future GRE tests.  You see, the test repeats either the math or verbal section of the test when you take it, and one of the repeated sections is a research section while the other is actually scored.  Here's the beef - they don't tell you which one is the research section and which one is scored.  Probably to avoid what happened with the Ohio Graduation Class when they told us our freshman year of high school that we were the beta testers to set standards - and half the class answered "C" for every question on the test.

I guess this means that I'm back to studying.  Tonight's chapter: reading comprehension.  So far, I've learned that the secret to this section is to not read the whole sample, but to go straight to the questions about the passage.

Uuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhh....

-AA