An open letter to the GREs.

Dear GRE,

I hate you. I want you to die a slow and agonizing death.

Sincerely,
A.W.

In truth, it's simply a relief that they're over. Once the rattled emotions cooled, I found that I could live with my results--though they are results that in no way reflect the 30 hours of math practice I had logged over the past 3 days. No, I’m not bitter.

Honestly, I choked. I had hoped to go down swinging, at the very least, feeling like a champ—even if a bit of a math-challenged champ. But computer tests be damned. I’ve spent my entire career as a test taker employing all of the PSAT, ISAT (Illinois, anyone?), ACT, SAT techniques of writing in the margins, crossing out answers, and skipping around questions. Nope, in the last standardized test of my life, they put it on a computer and disarmed me of all of my big gun test taking techniques.

As the math questions began popping up on the screen, and the little timer in the corner ticked away the seconds, I panicked, clicking “c” like I had an OCD tick for it. Shortly after that, panic gave way to feelings of defeat, defeat gave way to fatalism, fatalism was countered with a string of obscenities under my breath (humorously, I found out later that each test cubicle is miked, so the Egyptians test administrators definitely heard me), followed by an internal pep talk to get my act together. This cycle of emotions circled around for nearly 4 hours of test taking, leaving me exhausted by the end.

So exhausted, that I failed to realize that I had written down my final score on a sheet of official scrap paper, and dutifully turned that precious piece of paper into the proctor to be shredded. So exhausted, that I managed to walk for 30 minutes and take a cab for 10 until I realized that I had managed to leave the test center without the one thing that I had come there for. I had forgotten my score—not only forgotten it, but shredded it.

Another taxi ride later, I was begging the proctor to let me rummage through her garbage can, which contained the shredded, identical looking official scrap paper for no less than 8 different test takers. As I pulled each shred one of the garbage, one by one, looking for a score-looking number in my handwriting, I began to giggle to myself. So much for the ragings of my wounded ego! Pawing through the garbage has a terrifically humbling effect.

By the time I came home and made a batch of rice pudding for myself, I was feeling much better. (So what? It’s just a silly, standardized test) So much better, in fact, that I decided to cook dinner and dust my apartment—a bizarre display of domesticity that shows itself only after such situations of duress.
So, the GREs be damned. If grad school doesn’t work out—hey, I’ve always wanted to be a Seattle barista. Even better, I could return to my first love: Ben and Jerry’s. In this economy, that’s probably the best job I could get anyway.
In the meantime, I never have to think about FOIL or 30-60-90 triangles again—and that is a comforting thought.