Goodbye Mr. GRE

I…just…took…the….GRE. and now, I’m done. Ok not really I have lots to do still to get into grad school like the Chemistry GRE and fill out applications and pass my classes. But my goal for the summer is done.

I was kind of thrown off guard by the testing center’s location, between Blockbuster and a no-name pet store in Newport News. Well, huh. It was hot, I was wearing jeans (WHY?), I sat sweating in my truck afraid to go in thirty minutes early, but you know me, that’s when I arrived, 12:30 for my 1pm test. I was sharpening my pencils with my sharpener which I had purchased en route to my test. Can you believe Jacob and I don’t own a pencil sharpener? We probably do somewhere, especially now that I’ve brought home 4 boxes of things that had to leave my room (darn hardwood floors), but anyway. Sharpening pencils, neurotically, that was my task, anything but walking into the center way too early. Then my mom called, to wish me luck, not that I needed it of course. Of course. But just hearing her voice reminded me of her love and helped me be ready. Then I called Jacob, needing the final push to walk forward and reminder to be calm.

After all that sharpening and worrying, they wouldn’t even let me use my own pencils. My eraser, watch and jacket were all barred from the testing room. Understandable but again, I was caught off guard. But it was best that I had none of those things: I had no time to erase or look at my watch and the temperature was perfect (maybe because I was wearing pants?!)

The essays were first. I didn’t like the idea of it but I realized how burnt out I was at the end of the test and would not have enjoyed writing an essay after being bombarded by vocabulary words I did not recognize and questions I was inept to answer properly. I felt pretty good about my essays (no surprises, yay) when I entered the math section. After realizing I was running out of time, and had a minute and a half (the time allotted to each question) for the remaining two questions I had a freak out. The second to last question was the kind that I never figured out how to answer…the ONE question type that my review books didn’t cover, of course. The last one was another type that wasn’t covered, with a bit of time I could have figured out, but alas I had 30 seconds. I started my verbal test with hope. Halfway through I started asking myself what the consequences of scoring better on the verbal than on the quantitative were going to be, and just worrying. But I put it behind me to finish the section, much earlier than I needed to (like 5 min) but I was done by then.

Then I took the unrequired study section. It was math but had a calculator… it usually took me half a problem to remember I could just type it in and have the computer do the math for me. Finally, around 4 pm, I was shown my score. I was really pleased. Both sections were higher than my goals. Because of my assumption that I had bombed the quantitative section, I was really ecstatic that my scores came out how they should for this chemistry major! Q>V 😉

My dad told me that if I did poorly I could always go into the furniture moving business. When I called them to let them know I wouldn’t have to be ‘slotted’ into Grad school, Dad was sad because he already put a down payment on the moving truck for me. 😛

Jacob took me out to eat at Cheddar’s in celebration. I even got a raspberry lemonade for a drink, Jacob still got a water. I’m so happy it is over and that I don’t have to worry about studying for things that don’t even matter anymore, yay! (no offense, GRE). Well, except maybe odd things for the Chem GRE. Hinkle told me there are silly nomenclature questions and lots on aromaticity. But hey, I’m not thinking about that, only that I have one week of summer vacation left, whoop whoop.