GRE-e-easy
Posted on Oct 12, 2008 under life updates |Not really. The GRE was highly difficult. I kinda just wanted to say GRE-e-easy.
I took the test on Tuesday at a testing center here in Mexico City. It was really just a room with a dozen computers partitioned into bright teal stations. I had been studying for this test for a solid 2 months, usually for several hours a week and throughout the weekends. I hand-wrote 300 vocabulary flash cards and carried them around with me in chunks at a time, memorizing them on the subway or my walk to work. I brushed up on my math and writing skills in the meantime.
The big day started out ok. I made sure I had a decent amount of sleep, did some light yoga, trying not to rush. I cooked up a pot of my breakfast miso, and warmed up my GRE-brain with questions from the book. To make sure I had enough to eat to tide me over for the next 4 intense hours, I began to eat some granola. I was starting to run late, so I found a bag of plastic cups in the cabinet and poured the unfinished cereal into one of them, intending to finish it in the cab ride on the way over.
About 10 minutes later, riding down Chapultepec Avenue, I notice something strange in the cereal. Upon fishing it out with my spoon, I saw that it was a teeny tiny little ziplock baggy. You know, the kind they sell crack or other drugs in on tv. My heart skipped a beat. Or two. “Did someone slip me drugs right before I take the GRE?” ”Can you get high from eating crack?” ”What if I start hallucinating during the math section?”
My friend Jacquelynne calmed me down, laughing the whole time. She told me if the pencil started writing in purple with gold trim that I should book it out of there. As soon as I sat down in front of the computer, I forgot all about the drug-laced breakfast. I did well on the test, scoring within my target range, without any feeling stranger than the expected anxiety. I guess it was just a plain old plastic baggy.