I got my official gre scores yesterday. It's one of those things that even though the score pops up on the screen before you leave, I somehow start to doubt if I saw things correctly. So I was glad to see that I did indeed remember my scores correctly, and did as well on the writing as I thought I would. My mom was very excited. Though she went to see David Sedaris yesterday, so she was just in an excited mood yesterday anyways. And my gre literature books should get in today, so that test won't entirely kick my ass. Just partly. I mean, really. I looked at some of the suggested vocab lists. Words I had never even heard of. Terms that describe word play that I'm familiar with in practice, but didn't know there was a term for. Things I cannot even pronounce. Besides the fact that Paradise Lost is the most sited work on the whole test and I haven't read any of that since high school. What makes me mad about this whole thing is that the academy is in the midst of an argument about whether or not the Canon as we know it even really exists. No one reads the same books any ,ore. I'm sure Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters won't be on there, though I read that for a class.
So here is my question. What is the point of this test? I'm sending these people a writing sample, recommendations from professors, my transcript from 4 years of study. How is knowing whether I can identify a passage from The Faerie Queene really going to show admissions how I'll deal with studying modern lit in grad school? Should I not get funding because I thought a passage by Shakespeare was from A Midsummer Night's Dream rather than Twelfth Night? It all seems a little ridiculous.
I did get into a fight today on DC Bachelor. Surprisingly enough not with DCB, but with some other guys who decided that all women secretly want to be dominated, and that no relationship in which the woman earns more than the man will succeed. I'm annoyed, though, because the stupid site is not letting me post my next comment (the guy claims that career women make bad moms, and that I would never marry a poor, short dude) and I really want to comment. Grr...
4 comments:
any man who thinks women want to be "secretly" dominated obviously haven't meet us or any of the other collins ladies. fuck those schmucks (or not, really)...
-whit
hmm you should be able to comment. email me if it continues
The GRE subject test is essentially pointless. It's pretty much a crap shoot and how you do depends on whether you get a version of the test that asks about material you've studied (my questions were all on Af-Am fiction and Restoration Drama).
I was depressed about my scores because (w/out getting too specific) my percentile score was pretty much a "B." Then we started talking about our scores at a department party the next fall, and I realized that my score was about 20-30 percentile points higher than anyone else's.
So don't sweat it.
whit: Yeah, I actually kind of started to feel sorry for him after a while. I mean, he's obviously had some bad experiences. And what a horrible attitude to take into any real relationship.
DCB: It's happened before, really randomly. The link to the comments tries to put a "www" in there, so it doesn't work. If you take it out in the address box, you can see the comments, but when you try to post, it does the same thing. Next time it starts doing it, I'll let you know.
Jordan Baker: That's kind of what I figured. I mean, I'm used to getting in the top percentiles, but it seems like the test is hard for everyone. I figure I'll just freak out occasionally, rail at the test, and then calmly take it and accept what I get.
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