I Hate Exponents

Yesterday morning I started the day by waking up from a dream. In the dream, I was late for my GRE test - the test I was going to take after I got up. I’ve been out of school for about 9 years, and it was only two years ago I finally stopped having test anxiety dreams. Having them again makes me wonder if I really want to go back to school.

I was taking the test in downtown Philly so I took the train, and then after the test I was going to work (giving up half a day’s vacation time for this test was bad enough, so I wasn’t about to give up a whole day). I had promised to bring my nail gun to work so one of my co-worker’s could borrow it, so I put it in its case and lugged it down to the test center. I was the first person there, and the woman who opened the door for me asked if I was there to fix something. Doesn’t everyone bring a nail gun to the GRE?

The GRE is computer based now, and after being instructed to empty my pockets, I was ushered into a room of little cubicles. Each one of them had the monitor, keyboard, and mouse on the left side of the desk, and scratch paper and writing space on the right. Exactly the opposite of what a left-hander like me needs. I was stuck with the right-handed mouse, but I did what I could to re-arrange the desk. I should start a movement complaining that ETS discriminates against lefties ;-).

The test started with the essay questions. How sick is it that I actually enjoyed this part of the test? I’ve always been good at writing, but it always used to be work - writing papers for school or technical documents for a job. But since I started blogging, I’ve found that writing can be fun. Blogging is actually great practice for this part of the GRE. You have 45 minutes for the first essay, and 30 minutes for the second one, and that’s about the same amount of time that goes into writing a typical blog entry.

Then came the part I was dreading - the quantitative section. Since walking out of my previous GRE attempt a month ago, I’ve been studying math every day. The Barron’s GRE Prep book is excellent - I highly recommend it if you plan to take the GRE and you’ve been out of school long enough that you need a thorough math refresher. In my studying I learned that my one major weakness was exponents - there are a lot of subtle rules about how to manipulate them. While I mastered the basics, I would usually mess up the finer points. But each of the practice tests I did only ever had a few exponent questions, so I didn’t worry about it too much. So of course the test starts with an exponent question. And the next question is an exponent question, and the next one, and the next one. The first eight questions all had something to do with exponents. Can’t you please ask me something about a triangle inscribed in a circle? Or something about those patriotic jars full of red, white, and blue marbles? Or something about how fast Mary is driving? Please? After all those exponent questions, things got back to normal. I didn’t feel bad enough about the situation to cancel out of the test again, but I didn’t feel great about it either.

The test finished with the verbal section. In my practice tests I never scored below 700 on the verbal, so I didn’t spend much time studying for this part of the test. After finishing it, I really felt like I aced it.

When it was all over, the computer asked me if I wanted to cancel. No. Are you really, really sure you don’t want to cancel? No, wait, I mean, yes - is that a double negative? Who writes this stuff? Since it’s computer-based, you get your math and verbal scores right away (they still use humans to read the essays, so you have to wait for that score). 660 on both. That’s the best score I’ve ever gotten on the quantitative section of a standardized test (including the SAT) and the worst verbal. I was pleasantly surprised at the math score, given the shake-up I had with all those exponent questions, and puzzled by the verbal. But both scores are good enough. Between the time I spent preparing for this test and for my attempt last month, my life has been hostage to this thing for over two months. So what really matters is that it’s over.