It's been a few days - between getting the rest of my grad school application mailed out and taking the GRE, I'm pooped. Mercifully, I have recovered (I hear a collective sigh of relief throughout the flist). Here's a run-down of my week, just in case you care to know.
Tuesday, I spent the day compiling all my letters of recommendation and finishing up my statement of objectives and tweaking a cover letter ("tweaking" here meaning "a process that I copy-edit a table of contents and try to make it sound professional all under 200 words") Yes, it took all afternoon. I meant to catch up on "Heroes" - luckily I have managed to remain unspoiled thus far. Happy day.
I spent Wednesday at work, getting a second job, doing my one and only written assignment for my guitar class (what are the odds that my only written assignment for an actual college class this semester would be due the same morning I take the GRE?) and studying for the GRE before the home teachers showed up (nice kids, really).
Thursday: guitar class, turn in assignment (it was all about transposing sheet music and a few other cool things that I probably would have appreciated more if I wasn't on a hard deadline here - well, maybe I can try it again in my spare time). GRE at 11:00 - now, if you know anything about the GRE, there are three sections: Analytical Writing, Verbal and Quantitative. Analytical Writing and Verbal - not a problem for me. Quantitative is a fancy word for math (I find it fascinating that math people have to give their section a word that starts with Q and has three T's in odd places). Now, I didn't know this about the actual GRE (probably should have), but after you have taken the Verbal and the... my fingers are having a hard time spelling Quantitative, so I'm just going to call it Math... section, you are given the chance to re-take the section you had the most trouble with. I didn't find this out until later, so I just thought it was someone's sick idea of a joke to give me an extra section of the Math test to do.
Another thing: in the first section of the math, the procedures and such weren't too bad - but the arithmetic was horrible (like, I knew to multiply 85 by 76.9 or something to that effect, but actually doing it without a calculator was a little tricky (if not impossible). But - in the second Math section the computer gave me, I was allowed an on-screen calculator. But by that time, the computer had me allll figured out and it only gave me problems like "Solve x+y+capybara." So, the calculator was pretty pointless.
Anti-Math Rant: I am an English major. Letters and number do not mix without serious consequences. Putting letters into math problems is like breeding a cat with a gecko. It does not occur in nature and when you force it in the lab tests, some pretty bizarre things happen that just are sick and wrong. Beyond the Sierra Club and Greenpeace on your butt - denizens of the cat and gecko populations would laugh at the poor thing and then it would want to go kill itself. Letters should never be added to numbers - it's just not pretty.
Anywho - GRE. Finished it. Lost some brain activity for a few hours, but it returned from Mordor eventually.
Friday (being today): Got an email from the Master's program I'm applying for - they want me in for an interview as part of the application process. Don't entirely know what that means, but it's got to be good. I have an interview next Friday. I'm pretty excited ^_^
That's my smart-person update for the week.
Tuesday, I spent the day compiling all my letters of recommendation and finishing up my statement of objectives and tweaking a cover letter ("tweaking" here meaning "a process that I copy-edit a table of contents and try to make it sound professional all under 200 words") Yes, it took all afternoon. I meant to catch up on "Heroes" - luckily I have managed to remain unspoiled thus far. Happy day.
I spent Wednesday at work, getting a second job, doing my one and only written assignment for my guitar class (what are the odds that my only written assignment for an actual college class this semester would be due the same morning I take the GRE?) and studying for the GRE before the home teachers showed up (nice kids, really).
Thursday: guitar class, turn in assignment (it was all about transposing sheet music and a few other cool things that I probably would have appreciated more if I wasn't on a hard deadline here - well, maybe I can try it again in my spare time). GRE at 11:00 - now, if you know anything about the GRE, there are three sections: Analytical Writing, Verbal and Quantitative. Analytical Writing and Verbal - not a problem for me. Quantitative is a fancy word for math (I find it fascinating that math people have to give their section a word that starts with Q and has three T's in odd places). Now, I didn't know this about the actual GRE (probably should have), but after you have taken the Verbal and the... my fingers are having a hard time spelling Quantitative, so I'm just going to call it Math... section, you are given the chance to re-take the section you had the most trouble with. I didn't find this out until later, so I just thought it was someone's sick idea of a joke to give me an extra section of the Math test to do.
Another thing: in the first section of the math, the procedures and such weren't too bad - but the arithmetic was horrible (like, I knew to multiply 85 by 76.9 or something to that effect, but actually doing it without a calculator was a little tricky (if not impossible). But - in the second Math section the computer gave me, I was allowed an on-screen calculator. But by that time, the computer had me allll figured out and it only gave me problems like "Solve x+y+capybara." So, the calculator was pretty pointless.
Anti-Math Rant: I am an English major. Letters and number do not mix without serious consequences. Putting letters into math problems is like breeding a cat with a gecko. It does not occur in nature and when you force it in the lab tests, some pretty bizarre things happen that just are sick and wrong. Beyond the Sierra Club and Greenpeace on your butt - denizens of the cat and gecko populations would laugh at the poor thing and then it would want to go kill itself. Letters should never be added to numbers - it's just not pretty.
Anywho - GRE. Finished it. Lost some brain activity for a few hours, but it returned from Mordor eventually.
Friday (being today): Got an email from the Master's program I'm applying for - they want me in for an interview as part of the application process. Don't entirely know what that means, but it's got to be good. I have an interview next Friday. I'm pretty excited ^_^
That's my smart-person update for the week.
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