PHEW!!! Holy Mother of Divine God...all I've wanted for the past 5 tortuous weeks has been to free myself of the albatross that is the GRE. The beginning of last week I had finally numbed myself to the waiting, anxiety, and stress by convincing myself that I no longer cared and that I would do no better than the first time. In fact I kept in mind that there was a great possibility that I would do worse. And that the results wouldn't really matter because I certainly have no more time to do it again and even more certainly I will not spend any more money on this ridulosity. This reverse psychology worked...at least to a certain degree. I actually slept really well for the first time in about 3 weeks and my stomach wasn't constantly twisted in knots and I was also able to stop myself from fantasizing about all of the possible outcomes of my second attempt at the test. But I guess it was the day before that my psychological defense started to crumble. I hadn't studied much in the 5 weeks since my first attempt, I figured that studying constantly from July to November was quite enough and that the score did not reflect my knowledge or ability in anyway. I was doomed right from the start due to my dreadfully painful overreaction to something stupid which resulted in a complete lack of sleep and a great deal of worry the night before. Oh well, water under the bridge. After about a week and half I was over it and simply wanted to take it again and get it out of my way.
So every so often I pulled out the vocab cards or looked at some math thing, but I didn't put that much effort in until the week before at work I slowly but surely worked my way through the practice test questions and that was it really. Test day came and I was nervous and highly anxious. I kept pounding it into my head, "you're going to get the same score or worse, it doesn't matter, you don't care anymore." But a few hours before my stomach started twisting up and my heart started to race. I finally got to the test center, I was fortunate to be able to take it at the same place so everything about it was familiar and there were no surprises. I walked in like I owned the place. I filled out the paper and all of the background info and finally started the test, the writing section was first. I'm not sure if I did any better on that part, oh well I don't care is all I kept telling myself. As I started the verbal section, which was one of 2 scores that I would get immediately following the test, my heart started race. But I just plowed through it, realizing at the very least that I had more focus and energy to concentrate than the last time. Got done with it and moved on the quantitative section, the second score that I'd receive that day. I started to panic as I realized that problem after problem was uncertain to me. I felt like I was just guessing, I didn't really know how to figure them out. I wholeheartedly believe that the practice test in the study book I used was much easier than the actual test. As hard as I was concentrating every so often the image of another devastatingly crappy score crept into my mind and blood pressure spiked to the point where I pictured my heart bursting. But I kept at it, I finally encountered problems that I was able to actually calculate and figure out, then there were some where I didn't know if my logic was correct or what but I had to just put down an answer and move on in order to have a reasonable amount time for each problem rather than having to do a blind guess on the last 5 or 6 like last time. Well, I finally made it to the end. But after that there was an experimental section for the test makers to see how we do and if they can incorporate those questions into the next year's test...or whatever. It's voluntary, I didn't want to do it but I guess it was just a way to delay the inevitable, it was verbal so I was more open to doing it. The last time it was math, I literally just clicked on answer choices, not even looking at the problems. The section was easy save the reading comprehension questions, those are no joke, and I don't like them and I had nothing left to give to the GRE at that point so I just blew through it and finished up.
The tiny span of time between just after you've completed the test and the moment your scores flash onto the screen is something like I've never experienced before. Really I think it could be used as a form torture or be considered cruel and unusual punishment. It's a torrent of emotions, relief that you've completed the 2 hour mind bender, that's not including the 30 minutes for the experimental section or the 20 minutes or so it takes to do the background stuff in the beginning, and pure anxiety. You have the option of canceling, you'll never know your score and it won't be reported to anyone. The "Report Score" button is right there waiting to be clicked. Once you do that there is a warning that if you click it again, that's it, you're done, scores will be on your test report for 5 years and every school you apply to within 5 years will see every score. Now, that's not such a big deal to me, I'm not that upset about the schools seeing my first crap score, they'll see my second decent one and perhaps think that I'm serious enough to put in the effort to do it again and I've improved greatly. But in my specific case it's not that I didn't study or take it seriously the first time, I was ready until the night before when I worked myself over worrying about whether or not I'd be allowed to take the test at all due to the lack of middle name on my online confirmation...it's all in the earlier GRE post..I can't go into again, it's embarrassing and tedious.
At this point, my heart is about to pop out of chest and looking back on it I'm not sure if my head was swirling with thoughts or devoid of them. Although I do distinctly remember mentally preparing myself for another crap score, I even wrote down some numbers on the scratch paper so I could get used to seeing some absurdly low number in a futile effort to prevent a total meltdown. But I had to click on the "Report Score" button one more time to get there. "You cannot cancel or go back once you click "report score" for the second time." Holy God, I'm scared at this point, scared. I click it and as if not willing to experience the consequences of my actions I look away, not giving into temptation to actually hide my eyes with my hands. A single second passes when the screen flashed the numbers, I knew they were up, all I had to do next to end it all was look up. I remember in that flash that I was resigned, just do it, the numbers will be the same whether you look now or 10 seconds from now. I looked, it took a second for the numbers to register in my head.
Elation.
That was one of the best moments I had in the past 2 months, probably the best one. It was over, not only was it over, but it was over in a great way. I did it. I got a decent score. By no means fantastic, but good enough to give me the certainty that I will indeed be going to grad school this Fall and for now, that will do just fine. I got home and went straight away for the study books, 4 in all, gathered them and put them out of my sight, it's funny because I know I'll never look at them again but I'm hesitant to just dump them in the trash. They've been a part of my routine for a good 6 months, and not to mention the fact that all together they cost me around $70. I did however not hesitate to toss all of the notes that I took for the quantitative section, I couldn't care less about Pi, area of circles, right triangles, ratio times X equals the volume of a sphere squared minus the square root of negative N...yikes. I couldn't tare those pages out of my notebook fast enough. But far more important and profound is that now I have a sense of peace, I worked myself up into a frenzy over this, as I tend to do in situations that I feel are crucial to my own progress. I felt like the GRE was scary and somewhat beyond my grasp, like I didn't have complete control. My undergrad record is solid, I was a successful Peace Corps volunteer, I secured letters of recommendation, and I can write a purpose statement, but the GRE was uncomfortable, I truly felt it was the one thing that could hold me back. I don't take these sorts of things lightly, grad school means everything to me now, it's my ticket out of Arizona and to the next stage of my life where I want to be doing what I want to be doing...finally. I couldn't handle the idea of some meaningless standardized test holding me back from that. But anyway, I can move on happily and get ready to submit my applications once and for all. Before yesterday I was ramming through the application process but I always had that little voice saying "hey, you still have this giant hurdle that could render all of this effort useless, 'cause if you can't manage to at least get up into the 1000's, what the hell is that going to look like?"
Lesson learned: sometimes taking things a little less seriously can be highly beneficial, especially if you're someone like me who tends to go overboard in placing major significance onto certain events. The first time I was terrified and I sucked big time, the second time I wore flip-flops, I did not check a thousand times if I had my ID, and I gave the computer a big F.U. before I started (in my head that is). Yes, I really did that, and it gave me a second's worth of satisfaction. I didn't afford this one stupid test so much control over me this time and it worked out for the better. It was a lot of mental work to do that, and it took me a long time to finally convince myself to let go a little. Now I'm not going to say that I was able to put things into a broader perspective and become at peace with the fact that the world won't end if I don't do well on the GRE or that I should feel fortunate that I even have the opportunity because so many people are disadvantaged and under privileged...yada yada yada. No, this is major for me and if I F it up I might be trapped a lot longer than I can handle. So it's a balancing act for sure, placing enough significance to motivate you to achieve something that's not within your comfort zone but not so much that you want to launch yourself off a cliff to stop the anxiety and frenzy of worry you've worked up. You know you've gone off the deep end when it keeps you up night after night and it negatively impacts the rest of your day. Something that's always worked for me when it came to somewhat less important or significant events or chores was the idea of giving myself permission to not worry about it until I could actually do something about it, so obviously in most cases letting yourself fret at 3am won't do any good because there's nothing you can do...wait until at least the crack of dawn to start worrying.
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