An eloquent cram for the GRE.

Gentle readers—

I (with more than a touch of indolence) fervidly desire to obviate a protraction in studying for the verbal portion of the GRE by undertaking the travail of incorporating GRE vocabulary into a single (albeit erudite and pedantic) blog post, hoping that the memory of this post will serve me as a mnemonic device (or, at the very least, that writing this post is better than a self-inflicted cephalic bang against a wall as I hurl imprecations at my inchoate thoughts and circumscribed vocabulary). I hope to be exculpated for this egregious breach of blog decorum. Those of you who do not find this post conciliating may be mollified by the fact that torpor will soon prevail again over even my most self-aggrandizing tendencies and that the use of the vernacular will resume with subsequent postings.

At the moment, dear friends, I feel a touch phlegmatic, having been enervated by an inundation of preparations for the GRE and graduate school. Though I have a proclivity towards higher education—even with its propensity for florid, tawdry and ostentatious rhetorical flourishes, as this post itself demonstrates—I feel diffident in the face of the stolid ivory tower. The sanguine among us will suggest that I have husbanded my opportunities for academic growth well, which should mitigate the effects of these trenchant thoughts of self-doubt. While my anxiety is slaked some, I do not feel much abetted by these diaphanous and turgid words of empty encouragement. Fueled by a half pound of imported lindt chocolate and copious cups of Turkish coffee, I find myself more often maudlin and reduced to a lachrymose state.

Rather, I prefer to inure myself to the view of the sardonic among us, whose vitriol and perspicacious, invective remarks on the entire higher education system remind me to be impervious to any rejection letters that may come my way. These impudent and insolent among us, for example, rightfully lampoon and deride standardized tests as a basis for admission. They also note the degree to which irascible and ossified academics (cosseted by the well-funded administration) often foment the very same insipid punditry higher education seeks to jettison, or at least, to attenuate. Speaking with candor, I see that many graduate students are obsequious dilettantes, showering one or two key academics in their field with blandishments and lionizing their achievements—achievements which may not engender much in the “real world.”

Now, I will be the first to admit that, as I have been garrulous and voluble in making this argument, it may not be fully cogent, and may have been a touch impetuous in the making. It may also be true that I am ignoble for writing this prolix and precipitate posting as a rejoinder to a system that, in one year’s time, I hope to be joining myself. With luck, I will find a disparate type of academic—a hoary soul who can disabuse me from simplistic analysis and burnish my critical thinking skills while showing me salubrious ways to approach the world’s most exigent problems so that I can propitiate myself to the system with a pure conscience.

In the meantime, I cannot attest to the veracity of anything in this posting--it is true that I may have prevaricated in order to accommodate the plethora of vocabulary words. I only hope that its content was not soporific.

All my best—
A.W.