Yesterday was an eventful day.
First things first. I took the GRE for the first time in December of my junior year. I wasn’t at all happy with my scores. This October, I resolved to take a year off between my bachelor’s and graduate school, to relax and become in a well-rounded individual, in ways that would reflect well in a grad-school application. So long as I was at it, I figured it would be a good idea to take the GRE again, when I could prepare without worrying about finals.
After graduation in May, I spent the summer looking for a job and periodically working on the practice tests in the big book of them left over from the prep course I took. The past few weeks, I retrieved a GRE prep book from a friend who’d borrowed it some time before the last presidential election, fired up the accompanying CD-ROM and brushed up on things like test tricks and words like “obloquy” and “vitiate.” The past few days, I went into “Oh my God, I’ve wasted the summer and now I’m screwed and I won’t get into grad school and I’ll end up [insert horrific fate]!” mode.
This morning, I woke up from a fitful night’s sleep and felt okay. Whatever would happen, I wasn’t backing out. I made myself some coffee, ate a bowl of cereal, and, mindful of **El Elvis Rojo’s** exhortations to “Kick that test’s ass!” played “Smack My Bitch Up” a couple of times. I drove to campus, found the testing center, and promptly realized how much anal-retentive six-sheets-of-scratch-paper-only, copy-this-paragraph-and-let-us-take-a-digital-photo security goes with the test.
Things worked out. I got just about the scores I wanted. My math score won't cause any jaws to drop, but it's good enough for me. I called and told my parents the good news, and explained, yet again, significance of the test. My brother the LSAT veteran understood.
As for navel piercing, I’d long mulled it over, but there can be quite a gulf between “Ooh, that looks good” and actually doing it. I regretted having graduated from college with the same number of holes in my body as when I started. Last weekend, I’d made it as far as the piercing parlor before chickening out. Among my reasons was “I don’t want anything to distract me during the GRE.” Tired of merely wishing, I resolved that I would have my navel pierced after the GRE, the same day. As I joked to friends, if anything could take my mind off a lousy performance, surely a needle could do it.
As it turned out, I didn’t need to take my mind off anything, but I’d made a promise to myself. What’s more, I’d made a public promise to myself, and I didn’t want to back out again. **El Elvis Rojo** was nice enough to come with me to Forbidden Fruit. As it turned out, the piercing technician had a master’s degree, apparently in psychology , so I found myself discussing theoretical orientations as he knelt and traced lines on my stomach. Though I winced, the piercing itself was less painful than uncomfortable. Though I’ll have to forgo sleeping on my stomach for a while, I like it.