The Momentous Day

12:30pm, Saturday, April 29th. My scheduled time to sit down and take the GRE.

I had written down my directions and confirmed my appointment time yesterday, so I would be prepared this morning. I got a good nine hours of sleep last night, and this morning, a half-assed meditation and a full breakfast. I intended to leave the house a quarter to 12, figuring that this would give me plenty of time. Of course, I didn't get out of the house until 12, and then discovered as I was pulling out of my driveway that I had somehow lost the paper with the directions on it. Naturally.

I frantically started dialing numbers of people who, a) might know, or b) might be in front of a computer. Gabe was my first choice, but I received no answer. Andrew was my second choice, and I received both an answer and an affirmative to the computer requirement. I had him look up the ETS number, only to realize right after he had given it to me that I still had it in my phone from yesterday. Long story short, I did, in fact, get the address.

Which didn't really help, as there was not a building on Wichita St with an address on it. I belatedly called the testing center itself and was on the phone with the lady when a man yelled at me that if I was taking the GRE, I was a half hour late and I had better get my ass in there. Which I did, forthwith and with chagrin.

The test experience was unremarkable, although my frenetic search for the building in question had taken a certain toll on my previously unruffled nerves.

I think I aced the essays; according to the Princeton Review graders, my most common problem was lack of detail in my examples. I feel that I ameliorated (yes, that was a vocabulary word) that error, to what extent only the grades will tell me. I'll know in a couple of weeks.

The verbal I felt I did rather average on. There were no strains of brilliance in my performance; as always the reading comprehension made me feel rushed. I think I may have not paid enough attention to the first third of the test. My score ended up being a 660, or the 92nd percentile, worse than my last two practice tests, but better than my first. I'm disappointed by this; I was hoping to get in the high 90s, or really, anywhere in the 700s would have made my year and confirmed my brilliance.

The math I felt like I bombed. They kept throwing me xy axis questions, and I couldn't remember the formula to find a slope, and I ended up guessing and spending too much time on those questions. Somehow, I still ended up with a higher score than all my practice tests: 620. According to my Princeton review book, that's in the 50th percentile; Alex tells me that can't be right simply because of the standard deviation. This basically means that, according to Alex, I should be in a higher percentile; not something I'm going to argue with. Regardless, I can't complain; my goal was to get an average score, at least 50th percentile. Although, that doesn't really assist my delusions of grandeur.

Next step: Research schools and hone my senior thesis (re archetype in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, interesting in and of itself, since Nabokov hated that sort of thing) so that it will be ready for applications come fall.